Charging Back For Your Virtual Infrastructure

As you continue to consolidate your server infrastructure and make it more cloudlike, a key hurdle that you must overcome is cost allocation for the virtual infrastructure. While most enterprises are not yet charging back or tracking virtual machine (VM) costs in a sophisticated manner, accounting for resource consumption helps to convey the ongoing cost savings being achieved through virtualization and to justify its expansion by way of future capital purchases. But how do you do this? Well, there's more to it than simply buying a chargeback tool. The best practice found among enterprises Forrester has interviewed is to start with a clear understanding of your total operational costs, divide these by your virtualization allocations, and then incent accelerated use of the virtual infrastructure through pricing and marketing via the IT service catalog.