Here’s a story about unexpected behavior prompted by some chargeback rules at Pfizer. (By 'chargeback' I mean the budgeting scheme where IT resources are metered, then costs are attributed to the business units that consume them.)
Larry Cannell notes that when department budgets were squeezed, users moved Sharepoint files to non-Sharepoint systems "all to avoid internal chargebacks. In the end...a lot of extra work...but no impact on the bottom line." For HP Bladesystem, tools that let IT departments implement chargeback are nothing new. There are ways to both measure resource utilization, and to implement high-level chargeback policies.
HP has even added some ground-breaking capabilities here -- bringing continuous capacity planning tools into the x86 space, for example. We’ve also added server power consumption as a resource that can be tracked historically for chargeback calculation – or even capped so businesses can predict their spend.
You have to think like a non-IT guy, though, to predict how your internal customers will react to your chargeback rules. Put yourself in the shoes of a line-of-business manager:
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People will order from the "Value Menu". If someone thinks he could squeak by with some minimal level of service, he’s going to try.
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Square pegs will wind up in round holes. To an HR guy, using a USB key as the primary backup device for your employee payroll database seems reasonable.
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Exceptions have legs. That handshake agreement to charge a little less because the legal department promised they’d use minimal bandwidth? Ten minutes later, every other department will demand “the “low bandwidth deal”.
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Don’t put nametags on hardware. Especially with bladed infrastructure, you need to use language that avoids the impression that groups have “bought a server”. They’re paying you for a service…How you deliver that is up to you, not them.
Posted
05-15-2009 4:25 PM
by
Daniel Bowers