Currently, people are witnessing a shift in the way businesses are acquired and delivered. The commoditization of computer hardware, the adoption of virtualization, and cloud-managed services have given businesses a variety of options for reducing IT costs. Before taking advantage of the advantages of these options, however, businesses must know what is the best financial move. The cost and expertise they need to consider have been built into their existing infrastructure, especially data centers. Essentially, organizations need to have a clear overview of all assets and understand any proposed projects to achieve the exact cost of optimal decisions.

　　
Cost is still an afterthought
　　
No matter what kind of IT services are provided, any organization will generally have the ability to meet the requirements. The problem is that in many cases, the data center capacity far exceeds the organization's needs, but few understand the cost and how this unused capacity will impact the business. As a result, the organization wastes resources on assets that have no value; This will be very difficult if data center operators want to attract further investment from the CFOs of the companies involved, as they are already trapped in a financial black hole.
　　
For example, to reduce the cost of operations, many organizations want cloud computing or data center hosting as an alternative to their in-house IT services if the organization is still running its own data center. However, this approach may not always lead to cost savings. Quite simply, organizations can find themselves paying not only for cloud computing or data center hosting space, but also for their existing infrastructure, which is increasingly underutilized and providing less value. To use an analogy, if someone already owns a house, they will not rent an apartment, divide the family and property, and continue to pay the full cost, while half of the house is vacant. And if costs cannot be accurately compared on a "unit cost" basis (one is mortgage dominant and the other is rent-dominant), it makes it very difficult to get the best financial choice.
　　
Game over
　　
Data center operators are currently in a dilemma. Its proposition calls for IT outsourcing and public cloud to be more attractive and cost savings. However, more services are being removed, and IT infrastructure is being cut, making its in-house services more expensive, which can damage the business case for any historic investment in an in-house data center. The end result of this situation may be that all IT services are not placed in the cloud or with managed data centers, but throughout the internal data center, a result that most organizations do not accept for various reasons, and most importantly, do so effectively give up aggregate control of critical services and data.
　　
When making any decision, the cost of the business should ultimately be taken into account: after all, CFOs will support the investment if they can clearly see the return on investment. Unless the organization will have a lower cost of ownership (TCO) than it is today, data center owners create a false economy that increases the overall cost of the enterprise business without any bottom line. Instead, organizations must accumulate each of their potential costs, whether from electricity bills or infrastructure budgets.
　　
With the adoption of cloud computing and colocation, CIOs have an opportunity to break the tradition of "single service" with a single cost/SLA solution. Instead, they can begin to translate targeted services into appropriate costs and service levels that provide more value for each investment and business. Most importantly, however, recognizing what the actual utilization and idle capacity is, how much costs still need to be paid, and then determining how rational planning drives the full use of contract-linked capabilities.
　　
Energy efficiency is not financial efficiency
　　
For this process to occur, organizations need to understand what the different options are costing. While energy use effectiveness (PUE) and other efficiency metrics have emerged as the best way to measure the value of a data center, total cost of ownership (TCO) and unit cost should be the main factors influencing CFO decisions, and once CFOs understand their total cost of ownership (TCO) for their data center, organizations should ensure they break down the total cost of ownership (TCO) for each IT service. With this information, CFOs can understand changes in data center IT cost usage, and they can support decision-making, including a true view of the financial impact in any given situation.
　　
So, why are no organizations doing this now? Understanding the true costs and normalization of the data center and then comparing these costs in a highly complex environment involves a large number of variables and can consume a lot of human resources. Often this complexity implies simplified assumptions and various false factors to achieve its desired results, but this is often incorrect or suboptimal decisions. However, this result should not be like this. If it is possible to quickly and accurately predict the operational and financial impact of any data center decision, does that mean that cooling systems can be updated or servers can be removed? Ultimately, CIOs need to decide the future of their data center infrastructure. To gain a complete understanding of future investments, businesses need to make significant efforts to understand their data center costs so they can ensure that any investments in the future are valid and correct.