Chargebacks v Showbacks?

[deanwebb]

Is your org (or do you see in customers) a chargeback or showback model for IT resource consumption?

DEFINITIONS:
Chargeback is a group getting a bill for services consumed, which is taken from their budget.

Showback is where the group gets an invoice that shows costs, but does not actually transfer the money directly out of its budget.


I've seen chargeback schemes completely undermine virtualization initiatives when the chargebacks are so high that it's cheaper from a departmental perspective to keep the hardware running than it is to make an overall corporate savings by going virtual. The showback model came out to address issues like that so a poor internal pricing assessment doesn't keep internal customers from being incentivized to go with the overall cheaper solution.