Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Model for Storage

The total cost of ownership (TCO) provides a way to understand how customers make purchasing decisions by looking all the costs associated with purchasing and running IT equipment. Business objectives and purchasing criteria vary greatly between customers, and hence a one size fits all TCO model is not adequate for all storage workloads. A TCO model  well suited for storage looks at 1) capital expenditures (CapEx) of the storage and everything else in a typical datacenter rack that has typically dominated IT budgets, and 2) model operational expenditures (OpEx) which are dominated by power, cooling, and cost of device failures. This is useful for comparing a solution where the sole purpose is durable storage. 

Resources provided for the SNIA Total Cost of Ownership Model for Storage developed by the SNIA Solid State Storage Special Interest Group include a TCO Calculator, a white paper, and a video tutorial that explains the TCO Calculator.

Visit the SNIA webpage Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Model for Storage to download the TCO Calculator that accompanies this article.