Building a VMware Cost Model

During my work with the IEC last year three things stood out with market leading ITAM implementations :

• They mapped services to costs effectively
• They provided feedback to the business in layman’s terms
• They provided the business levers for change

Unfortunately, this level of maturity also involved a great deal of spreadsheet crunching.  The closest thing I have seen to automating this spreadsheet crunching process between ITAM and IT Financial Management with a business application is Digital Fuel.

Unlike traditional ITAM tools with an asset focus, or ITSM tools with a service focus, their first port of call is IT costs, building a suitable cost model, and other automated IT cost management business processes such as IT cost allocation, chargeback, budgeting, and re-forecasting based on actual versus budget IT spend.

I have included a video of a Digital Fuel webinar from back in November entitled “Billing & Chargeback in a VMware Cloud Environment”

“The speed and flexibility of virtualization makes some form of chargeback mandatory; otherwise, demand could skyrocket and more low-priority workloads could be deployed that don’t justify their costs”
Gartner = 2008

The premise is that VM’s – although convenient and fast to deploy are not free and that developing a cost model for VMware (whether for invoicing or just internal reference) allows resources to be allocated to high priority projects.

The presentation gives a good overview of developing a cost model for VMware implementations and includes a high level overview of both VMware V Centre Chargeback and Digital Fuel  technology.

Building a VMware Cost Model from Martin Thompson on Vimeo.

Best viewed in full screen. If you have any experiences with building a cost model for VMware or other virtual platforms please post a comment below or contact me.