I was reading the article about VMware chargeback and saw this quote.
On the other hand, he noted, showback "maintains the existing power relationship, but cost accountability becomes a positive thing instead of a negative thing." If VMware focuses on showback rather than actual chargeback, "it will have marginal success," Mann said. Otherwise? "I'm skeptical."
And I have to say I agree with it. In my experience, show-back gets you tremendous value without having to do a heck of a lot of work. One customer, we at newScale worked with years ago, reported 40% reduction in a certain type of request by just showing the cost to company. It's hugely encouraging that so many people want to do the right thing if given the information.
As we virtualize our data center, the issue of who pays for shared infrastructure becomes thorny. I fear we may be devolving back to paying for CPU cycles; and that didn't work.
Instead, I think the first step is to understand what is the customer buying from us, then explain it in market terms. That's the role of a service catalog. Putting the metering and chargeback ahead of the "what" is a mistake.
The rest of the article: Price, politics working against VMware vCenter Chargeback.
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