5 Top Tips To Succeed in Shared Infrastructure Environments

There’s no doubting that cost management and increasing efficiencies are at the top of the business agendas today.  It’s good to see the IT department is doing its bit by trying to account for all costs and streamlining the data centre. 

To do this successfully, some have adopted a ‘recharging’ or charge back model.  This means the IT department charge individual business units for the services and infrastructure that they use in a shared service environment.

In theory, this model is an effective way to control and save costs.  In practice, however, if it’s not properly implemented, it can impose complexity, inequality and wastage.  

Atiek Arian, Senior Consultant at GlassHouse Technologies UK offers his top tips to prevent this from happening. 

1. Standardise service definitions and cater for ring-fenced projects 

At the heart of any good shared service model should be a consistent service catalogue and associated architecture / solution matrices. Not only do these provide strategic direction and assist architects in providing infrastructure solutions for new projects, they also develop a framework upon which a uniform costing model can be built. 

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The catalogue and associated cost model should have the scope to cater for projects that require a bespoke set of technologies, or those that require dedicated use of what would normally be shared infrastructure.  

If all the elements of these projects are not properly identified and unilaterally recharged, business units could be overcharged in order to compensate for ‘overseen’ outlays, or the IT division may be left with large residual costs.