Implementation of TCO in Resiliency Approach Applied in the Financial Sector
Teologlou, G.
Price Systems International

Every large commercial enterprise must successfully deal with challenges of planning, coordinating, and managing IT governance and compliance. In most organizations however, IT decision makers lack visibility into spending, performance, and TCO of these essential programs.

IT project decision making continues to be based on reactive responses to presumed needs, inadequate risk-versus-value assessments, and over-optimistic projections of business outcomes. Whatever business case is made to launch a governance or compliance initiative often occurs at a departmental or division level, it rarely includes the necessary factual details to ensure accurate estimates, and increases IT spending without consideration of overall enterprise objectives or priorities. Employing non-biased performance measures, benchmarks, and models reveal the true risks and cost benefits of IT Governance & Compliance programs.

Current reports such as the 2005 Tripartite Authorities Resilience Benchmarking Project points to the need for understanding, measuring and strengthening Business Resiliency. There is a minimum cost required to achieve a level of resiliency, however want optimize resiliency effectiveness for each dollar spent as measured by the Resiliency Index.

Frameworks such as CobiT 4.0 and Val-IT aligns IT Strategy to Business Strategy within a context of compliance, governance, and operational risk management.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) provides a means of evaluating IT investment decisions.

Software Cost Estimating Model provides a consistent framework to holistically and consistently calculate TCO on a lifecycle basis.