If you’ve seen, either in person or via the web, any of the recent keynotes delivered by VMware CEO Paul Martiz on the journey to the cloud, you understand that the first step in “the cloud direction” is to get your infrastructure as virtualized as possible. (Check out his keynote from EMC World 2011 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac9jQZi_lz8">here</a> )

From there, many companies move in different directions—and that’s to be expected—but if you’re end goal is to get “to the cloud” where you can truly run “IT as a Service”, then you MUST be able to accurately and, in real time, calculate the costs of operating, provisioning, and otherwise maintaining the virtual infrastructure you and your team worked hard to put in place.

Enter VMware vCenter Chargeback.

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“What is vCenter Chargeback?”

Chargeback is a mechanism to account for the operational costs involved in providing and maintaining an IT infrastructure, including the costs for IT services and applications. Measuring resource utilization and calculating the corresponding IT operational cost enables you to account for the IT resources utilized and bill for the services provided.

Now, will most companies allow their departments to be charged for the IT services they required be provided to operate? I can’t answer that question. But will your CFO appreciate the granularity, report-ability, and hard dollar amounts you can provide to help show where the money in the IT budget goes? Absolutely.

This is one of those technology solutions I wish we witnessed existing in more environments today, and, of course, something that eGroup can absolutely help you and your organization implement and take advantage of.

Read more at <a href="http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-chargeback/overview.html">http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-chargeback/overview.html</a>