Can I Calculate the Cost of a Client?
A strict answer to this question would be No. The pricing of the necessary hardware and software depends to a great deal on the vendor and contract; customer demands vary so much that a unified statement on preparation, implementation, and support requirements is impossible. Despite this, the tables below indicate which administration and support costs you need to consider when estimating the profitability of a multiple client solution in the ASP environment. Administration costs have been estimated on an approximate hourly basis; they will vary from this approximation in real situations. We have not attempted to estimate the costs of hardware and software; replace the value X with your actual costs. The cost template is intended to help you estimate the costs of your own business case - there remains the risk that fixed business costs can vary significantly.
Assumptions
(1) Software and hardware (for one or more customers)
|
Cost type |
Costs |
Comments |
|
Purchasing, leasing, license costs for technical infrastructure |
X |
No general statement can be made |
(2) Basic once only costs for each customer
|
Cost type |
Approx. time in hours |
Services |
Details |
|
Organization |
20 |
Contract processing |
8 |
|
Include customer in support administration |
12 |
||
|
Technical administration tasks |
14 |
Create and initialize client (users, printers, RFC destinations…) |
4 - 5 |
|
Define customer data for BC Sets (Customizing) |
3 - 10 |
||
|
Create logon groups and logical system |
1 |
||
|
Prepare monitoring |
1 |
||
|
Network connection |
2 - 16 |
Leased line or virtual private network (VPN) or |
16 |
|
HTTPS |
2 |
||
|
*** Total *** |
36-50 |
||
(3) Monthly costs for each system:
|
Cost type |
Total time |
Services |
|
Technical administration (system landscape with three systems) |
40 |
Maintenance, backup |
|
Distribute updates with transports |
||
|
Upgrades |
(4) Monthly administration costs for each customer (= client)
|
Cost type |
Approx. time in hours |
Services |
Details |
|
Organizational services |
5 - 10 |
Support, hotline |
|
|
Technical services |
1.5 |
Check transports |
0.5 |
|
Troubleshooting |
1 |
||
|
Network (Leased line or virtual private network (VPN)) |
3.5 |
Communication service |
|
|
*** Total *** |
10-15 |
(5) Special actions for a single customer - costs for each action
|
Cost type |
Approx. time in hours |
Services |
Details |
|
Removing customers |
4 |
Delete client |
1 |
|
Closing organizational tasks |
2 |
||
|
Update network |
1 |
||
|
Relocating customers |
11 - 23 |
Transport client |
4 - 16 |
|
Close customer |
2 |
||
|
Adjust technical settings (RFC address, login groups…) |
1 |
||
|
Network (leased line/VPN) |
4 |
||
|
Restore |
8 - 28 |
Restore client |
4 - 24 |
|
Customer support |
4 |
This template tells us the following: Each customer generates some initial unique costs, and then some monthly costs. The initial costs are relatively constant, specified in the table above as an average of 43 hours. On top of this there are costs for the technical infrastructure, which remain lower, the more customers share the technical setup. If we define the costs for a system and its technical infrastructure with s, and the number of customers using the system simultaneously with r (reuse factor), then the initial costs for each customer are
The monthly costs for the customer are made up of the system costs (table 3) and the administration costs (table 4). The latter are dominated by consulting and support costs, however, these can be reduced by quotas fixed in contracts. According to tables 3 and 4 these costs average out at
It is clear that system costs dominate in a system operated with a single client, whereas these costs only make up a comparatively marginal share of the total costs in a system operated with 100 clients (40/100 = 0.4).