7.2.2 Service Showback and Metering
The Service Showback and Metering process provides a mechanism for calculating service costs for end users. The short term goal is to raise awareness on costs based on service consumption usage. For an organization in an initial maturity state no formal accounting procedures and billing are involved, but as the maturity within the organization increases the Service Showback and Metering process integrates with the IT Business Control layer and supports automated IT chargeback.
Key focus areas:
Early alignment during the service design and development process
– Showback enables service subscribers to see costs associated with service utilization
. Showing the cost of consumption is the first step towards moving an organization to IT chargeback, where consumers pay for services consumed.
Showing and calculating true service costs
– Service costing is complex in a vCloud
as services are designed to run on pooled resources and have inherent elasticity features. The key to success is to understand and align to vCloud
cost models and to be able to break down individual service components costs and understand their interrelationships.