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Utilization based technology services and support

Would you ever pre-pay for your electricity or water service years in advance, knowing that if you used LESS you would pay MORE and if you used MORE it would not even be available? Of course you wouldn’t!  This is exactly how many companies are acquiring their technology services and support today, and that needs to change.  Technology services and support should be treated like a utility, which is based on UTILIZATION of the services not a fixed capacity model.

Two aspects of utility services are clear expectations around what is delivered, and the associated cost.  One gallon of water costs $X per gallon, electricity is $X per KwHr.  For 50Mb of bandwidth you pay $200 a month, for a hosted Exchange mailbox it is $12.50.  This should be the same way you acquire technology services and support

The final piece of utilization based technology is establishing  clear expectations (and costs!) for the services and support.  It’s obvious what happens when you add another Exchange mailbox but not so on the support side if you are still using a capacity based model for your support. (internal or hourly).   The result is that as a company grows technology services and support can vary widely and are not tied to results or revenue, this is not good!

To avoid this, companies need to shift to UTILIZATION based technology services and support. This aligns the technology costs with business revenue for both the ups and downs that are inevitable.  You wouldn’t want 1,000 gallons of water at your front door if you only needed 500.  The same should be so with your technology services and support!

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