Beyond Benchmarks: Estimate Your Application Maintenance Costs Using Internal Data

Applications professionals struggle to explain the cost of their applications' ongoing operations and maintenance to their business counterparts, who commonly perceive the costs as excessive. The business perceives these costs as excessive in part because of the way applications professionals deliver the information — as a large and indecipherable lump-sum budget item. Applications professionals who want to avoid blind mandates to cut costs by "X" percent must break out application costs in a way that business people can analyze and digest. When they do, they give the business an opportunity to make smart, surgical reductions to costs and shift underutilized resources to the work that is most important to the organization, increasing overall agility and innovation while reducing wasteful spending habits.