Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a popular financial estimate used to assess costs (both direct and indirect costs). Typically, TCO analyzes the financial impact of deploying information technology (to take an example) over the entire life cycle. Depending on the IT deployment, factors such as the following are accounted for:

• End-user computer Hardware purchase costs
• Software license purchase costs
• Hardware and Software Implementation / deployment costs
• Hardware warranties and maintenance costs
• Software license tracking costs
• Operations Infrastructure Costs
• Infrastructure (floor space) costs
• Cost for electricity and cooling
• Network hardware and software costs
• Server hardware and software costs
• Testing costs
• Cost to upgrade or scalability
• IT Personnel costs
• “C” Level Management Time costs
• Backup and Recovery Process costs
• Costs associated with failure or outage
• Diminished performance incidents (i.e. users having to wait)
• Costs of security breaches (in loss of reputation and recovery costs)
• Technology training costs of users and IT staff.
• Audit costs
• Insurance costs
• Replacement costs
• Migration costs
• Decommissioning costs

The following example of an Xcelsius TCO dashboard is from myxcelsius.com, a blog dedicated to Xcelsius Dashboards.

The following is just a static screenshot. You can click on the dashboard thumbnail to enlarge the image, but visit the dashboard itself to try out all the interactive elements. There are plenty of controls that you can use to model total cost of ownership.

Xcelsius TCO Dashboard Calculates Total Cost of Ownership

Tags: Business Objects Xcelsius Dashboard, TCO dashboards, dashboard example

Reference: Have you seen this new book on Business Objects Xcelsius 2008?

Crystal Xcelsius For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))