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Gaining better insight into the cost of IT
Asset management capabilities coupled with cost tracking
tools help high‐tech leaders better manage the cost of IT.
By Denise Dubie, Aug 11, 2009
Enterprise IT managers today are forced to more closely examine how
well they deliver IT services the business within tight budget
constraints. That’s why industry watchers say high‐tech leaders need to
adopt IT cost management practices that would uncover the true cost of
IT.
Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) recently examined how well IT service management vendor Digital
Fuel delivered products that not only tracked IT services, but also enabled enterprise IT managers to
understand the cost of deliver those services. According to EMA, there is a greater need for financial
transparency into IT and Digital Fuel is among the vendors – including Apptio and HP ‐‐ offering IT financial
management capabilities.
“Digital Fuel offers two distinctive solutions each with service portfolio management capabilities included:
one solution for IT cost management and one for service quality management,” the EMA report “Deliver IT
cost visibility with Digital Fuel” reads. “Each of these solutions stands on its own to meeting pressing
corporate priorities. Yet, they are integrated and work together demonstrating Digital Fuel’s vision to bring
together cost, quality and service management into a cohesive management strategy.”
The vendor’s IT cost management products offer customers capabilities such as early warning notifications
that alert IT managers when trending is straying from the planned IT budget. The software also allows IT
managers to model and allocate cost pools across cost centers and business units, and proactively track and
drill down into overall costs for specific IT services, such as infrastructure, application licenses and IT labor
costs. Digital Fuel also enables its users to prepare chargeback statements for IT service charges by
consumption, allowing charges to be broken down by several factors such as business unit, geography and/or
top spenders.
“While technology‐level management and analytics no doubt it still a requirement, new solutions are needed
to help IT manage the business‐related disciplines of IT,” according to EMA. Management vendors across the
board ‐‐ including BMC, CA, EMC, IBM and others ‐‐ are now realizing the need to address IT financial
transparency needs and deliver products that can automate the process of tracking costs associated with
services, the report suggests.
Yet, “Digital Fuel has the advantage of starting early and investing aggressively in the area of cost
management,” the report reads.
Interested in freeware and shareware, open source applications and scaled down versions of commercial
software and services? In the coming weeks, Network World will devote an online forum (now dubbed
Management Maven ‐‐ new name suggestions welcome!) to the topic of free techie stuff, which I will compile
and present for your review and potential download. Let me know what you find, what you want to hear more
about and what invaluable tools that didn’t cost you a thing at ddubie@nww.com.