TCO Summary
In today's widely distributed IT computing environment, we must understand TCO in order to effectively evaluate all of our deployment alternatives. All studies on TCO have shown that the TCO of interconnected servers, workstations, and intelligent access devices is higher compared to the centralized mainframe and dumb terminals of yesteryear, and the key reason is the lack of attention to post-deployment system requirements, most especially the availability requirement.
If a system is designed, deployed, and managed without special attention to organization, people, process, and technology issues, the total cost of ownership will definitely spiral out of control.