Our government is talking non-stop about transparency and accountability, as it soothes fears around budget spend and government interventions. I would like to plug these same 2 qualities in terms of storage management and cost controls. If it sounds like I am trying to lobby for a coveted government post (I am caught up on my taxes over the years), you can rest assured that Hitachi is politically satisfying enough for me.
Transparency – econometrics is the key to transparency. Using unit cost measurements to explain where the costs are coming from. Cost is so much more than price, and all these costs have to be stacked up, measured and verified in order to see the true cost of goods (COGs). If you need help defining all the types of money, see this short outline of 33 types of costs that HDS uses for definition.
Accountability – users need to account for what they consume. Bad behaviors will continue when no risks or rewards are present. DBA and application owners need to account for capacities that are underutilized, or aging etc. Re-charge or chargeback mechanism (even dummy invoices) are helpful in assigning local costs for resources consumed.
If users see actual usage rates, and the associated costs, there is a new light on asset optimization and the ability to be sensitive to ROA. IT organizations that implement some type of chargeback or monthly dashboard can encourage better storage consumption behaviors. You cannot improve what you cannot measure, so having the right levels of transparency and accountability can enable better insight into the political, organizational and technical aspects of storage ownership costs.
Comments (1)
David Merrill’s Blog » Blog Archive » Voodoo Economics on 23 Apr 2009 at 10:19 am
[...] money without the needed measurement systems (econometrics), will produce voodoo savings. You need transparency and accountability in your costs and saving [...]