Understanding IT Costs

Peter James and Martin Bennett

Jisc Costing IT Services (CITS) Project

University of York, 16th December 2013

CITS Stage 1: Janet X-Ray

Financial Tool

University of York IT Cost

Exercise

CITS Stage 2

• Repurposing York spreadsheet and data into a generic tool

• Costing specific activities e.g. data centres

• Extending to other institutions• Financial skills learning materials for IT

staff

Jisc Costing IT Services (CITS) Project

PURPOSE

RECORDED COSTS

COST OBJECTS

USE

• Identify what an IT department does

• Enable benchmarking

• Find improvements and/or cost savings

• Provide more robust data for specific decisions

• Determine charges for services

• Devolve budgets or assign financial responsibility

• Track cost and VFM improvements over time

• Improve accountancy systems to better support decision-making

Central ITStaffHardwareSoftwareOther

Local ITStaffHardwareSoftwareOther

EstatesEnergyCoolingPower Supply

OtherSpace/TRACDepreciation

ServicesIndividualGroup

ActivitiesData CentreStorageV Machines

Strategic DecisionsCloud

Investment DecisionsStorage

ManagementResponsibilityBenchmarking

An IT Cost Model

Cost Distortions

• Not Just Cost- other factors- cloud may work best as part of strategic change

• Not for everything- non urgent HPC- lower tier storage

• Different solutions

Costing HPC and Storage

• Not just cost- other factors- cloud may be best as part of strategic change

• Not for everything- non urgent HPC- lower tier storage

• Multiple solutions e.g. for HPC- compute/store/memory bundles- speed & ‘virtual cores’

HPC & Cloud Considerations

Storage Costs

Capex Per Gb

Opex per Gb

Total per Gb

Tier 1 Storage - NetApp £6.29 £2.08 £8.36

Tier 2 Storage - SAS £2.60 £0.00 £2.60

Tier 3 Storage - MDL £1.08 £0.00 £1.08

Tier 4 Storage - Thumpers £1.25 £0.00 £1.25

Amazon Web Services