Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
What is TCO?
How much does it really cost to own and manage your department's personal computers? Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), looks at these expenditures, and is defined as all costs incurred in the lifecycle of a workstation from acquisition to disposal.
According to industry observers such as the Gartner Group, TCO is somewhere in the $7,000 to $13,000 range (per device, per year). Fortune and The Economist magazines estimate these costs to be anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000 per device per year.
A detailed TCO analysis can be found at the Educause site, Lowering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for the Desktop.
Total Cost Of Ownership at the UW
At the UW departmental TCO costs generally fall within the range of $2,000 to $3,500 per workstation per year depending on staffing and salary levels. For example: a small UW department with 40 desktop computers, having about 45 users and 2 servers, probably has two tech staff positions, one full and one half time, with IT salary costs of approximately $90,000 per year. Using these numbers the department's estimated yearly TCO cost could be more than $ 2,300 per machine per year. The cost of hardware acquisition, software maintenance and user training is not included in this TCO calculation.
This department IT staff may provide some level of support to departmental desktops, but might be unable to deliver a number of critical services including:
- Consistent user support services
- Dependable coverage when IT staff are on vacation or out sick
- Timely hardware repair/replacement
- Professional data backup and restore services
- Offsite data storage options
Lastly, given the increasingly complex desktop security environment, IT staff may well spend the majority of their time chasing and applying the latest hot fixes and security patches, giving them little or no time to address or respond to departmental IT needs or priorities.
Nebula and Total Cost Ownership
Nebula is a system of networked personal computers centrally managed and supported by UW Technology. Nebula may significantly reduce TCO costs, and help your department provide its users with a robust and full featured desktop computing environment. It has been designed to handle critical desktop services, leaving more time for staff to address departmental IT concerns.
Nebula Service Options
Nebula currently offers several service options:
- Nebula Gold: A full-service, managed desktop option that provides technical support and a standardized suite of software.
- Nebula Bronze: A lower cost option designed for departments that have limited on-site technical support staff, but are interested in having some of the most critical desktop services managed centrally.
- Husky KIOSK: Intended for public-area computers whose primary function is to make Internet, email and secure file transfer services available to users.
For details and technical spefications about these options and current pricing, please see the What Is Nebula? page. We also welcome the opportunity to work with you to tailor a solution to meet your particular departmental needs.
