Navigating the New TCO Landscape

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The TCO discussion must move from a one-sided justification of the cost (and payback) of the proposed technology to a discussion of what the opportunity cost to the business will be if investments in network infrastructure are cancelled or delayed.

If a company makes a strategic decision to decentralize manufacturing and distribution but is wary of increasing headcount, it will look to edge computing and network automation. It will also likely want to ensure robust security at remote sites, which means investing in zero-trust networks and visibility software that can ensure that remote sites are subject to the same corporate security as the central office.

In these cases, it is not the network manager or even the CIO who should be solely responsible for creating the budget justification for network investments. Instead, network investments should be included in the overall recommendations and remote business investments that other senior executives (such as the COO or VP of Operations) make in conjunction with the CIO and/or network manager, HR, etc.

In this scenario, the total cost of investing in network austria mobile database is weighed against the cost of not investing in them and the lost corporate opportunity to decentralize operations that would not be possible without the technologies needed to make it happen.

Obtaining budget approval
The lesson to take away from the above example is that network managers need to consider and understand the business value and opportunity cost of every network funding proposal they make. The more network managers do this, the more successful they will be in securing funding.

Here's an example of networking needs that are likely to be closely related to business opportunities.

Companies will continue to move more IT to the cloud because they like the “pay for use” feeling. Accordingly, more networks will evolve into hybrid combinations of on-premises and cloud resources.

At the same time, companies need robust protection for both cloud and internal networks to avoid data leaks and intellectual property theft.

Most companies already use an IAM (Identity and Access Management) system, which allows network staff to have a “single pane of glass” to view all user access and permissions, whether it’s on-premises or in the cloud. Unfortunately, an IAM security solution doesn’t provide the same level of security visibility and granularity as CIEM (Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management) software, so a network manager may suggest investing in a CIEM, although this can be quite expensive.