Originating Author: Dave Vellante
Storage chargebacks are a pain. The business naturally wants to understand what they're getting for their dollar but at the same time, the information available on actual consumption of resource is anemic. Maybe storage hardware is roughly tracked but software and services, and increasingly automated services are not given much attention.
The key issue with chargebacks is IT has no good way to meter, monitor and charge accordingly for the consumption of service to the business. A storage services architecture has the potential to change this by allowing application owners to purchase only those services they consume. This necessitates a change in the way chargebacks are fundamentally viewed and requires new business models for storage provisioning.
Action Item: Storage administrators need to begin constructing new, pay-as-you-go models of storage that reflect the consumption of storage and related services versus some vague concept of chargeback. Importantly, IT must provide transparency using clear metrics that tie business value to the delivery of storage services.
