For those of a certain age, years ago, cartoonist Walt Kelly drew a character named “Pogo”, who was famous for saying in an Earth Day poster in 1970, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Fast forward to today. With dwindling resources and budget constraints affecting every area of businesses, it’s become a requirement that IT managers keep a constant, close eye on the bottom line. Costs can easily spiral out of control, so it’s incumbent on leaders to know who in their organization is spending money on what. In some organizations, staffers have become their own worst enemy.
One solution to the spending problem might be to implement “chargeback monitoring,” and service provider Allot (News - Alert) Communications has such an option available.
Allot notes that enterprises are distributing network and IT costs through chargeback models that effectively require different departments to pay for their service level agreement (SLA). Accurate and auditable chargeback models available from Allot can be implemented using DPI-based solutions integrated with Active Directory to monitor and meter actual usage per user, per application or per resource (such as WAN or VPN link); to mediate those usage records into aggregate records for billing purposes; and to provide detailed reports to both department personnel and management. Likewise, IT managers can monitor and measure SLA deviations that would warrant a credit back to the department that was affected.
The obvious benefits of doing so would be a more accurate reading of where the money is going, and making each department manager accountable for his department's browsing and other activities. This would allow IT managers to provide visibility into resource utilization, justify and recoup the cost of IT services to corporate users and departments, and to improve capacity planning and budgeting.
For companies utilizing Allot’s Department SLA Chargeback, this means they can more easily:
- Analyze and identify billable items and their unit cost;
- Map items into a chargeback policy for real-time monitoring and metering;
- Collect and aggregate usage records per user, application, resource, etc., and;
- Provide usage records to a billing mediator and usage reports to management.
Every company and manager is facing the same close scrutiny about income and out-go these days. But instead of whining about the problem, the most successful ones will identify the problem and do something about it. Which side are you on?
Edited by Blaise McNamee