ChargebackShowback is a common request from IT Admins and managers but what they can never answer is what are your real costs associated with running the individual VMs, Desktops, or Applications? What I normally hear is well we can estimate that, or we can ask. The problem with that approach is it’s like any other data crunch garbage in garbage out. The other issue is that a simple Showback or Chargeback aren’t the same thing as financial transparency they are just billing models.
Let me start with an apology I realize I don’t post as often as I should, sorry about that. The reason I don’t post more as I realized recently is that I am an IT person and by default IT people are wired a little differently.
I was recently involved in a conversation about an enterprise solution proof of concept. The solution itself would be successful but the user access and authentication is where I got hung up. The questions I asked were around the number of users that would be accessing the solution and how many simultaneously.
Some of the other engineers in the room looked at me like I had two heads, my guess is they were worried about scaling the solution itself to meet the potential 500K+ user count. But then I asked how many Active Directory servers they were planning for the production environment to support the authentication requirement or if there was a plan to off load authentication through an appliance or another solution.