One of the largest sources of expenditure for financial organisations remains unaccounted for. This is a staggering claim, but one that applies to any large corporate that runs a substantial IT network. Unlike the cost of telecommunications, that can be clearly understood and collected, there is a growing black hole of IT costs that are spiralling out of control and are often costing large organisations such as the financial services sector millions of pounds in revenue every year.

With the rise of convergence and the massive uptake of Internet or IP based communication, organisations with large networks are now in need of a tool that can measure and account for the level of resources that departments or individual users are consuming. This is important not only for the IT manager, but also for the Financial Director as a form of ABA (Activity Based Accounting).

Network managers currently have capability to monitor a limited number of interfaces using network probes, but cannot convert this information into meaningful accounting data or obtain a holistic view of network utilisation. At present, the majority of IT managers have to rely on guesswork to judge how much their IT infrastructure is costing them and what they really require is a means of translating IT usage into a monetary value. The rising cost of IT infrastructure is particularly acute in the world of banking and financial services, where the delivery mechanisms for customer contact are changing. With the rise and acceptance of on-line banking facilities, large financial institutions have realised the potential of technology in providing a more cost-effective service for customers with the benefits of lower overheads. As the financial services industry embraces the concept of web-based services and provides more services that are dependent on a complex IT backbone, they should also be aware of managing the expenditure that such networks incur.

Billing software vendor, uni-X Software has developed a tool that enables complete cost transparency for IT networks so that uni-X Software, companies can now accurately track high volume users of IT resources (e.g. WAN traffic, CPU utilisation, hard disk space, xoIP services) across an organisation's network and allocate the subsequent costs to individuals or departments. uni-X has already helped Deutsche Bank understand the cost of running their network. As a result they have been able to identify and apportion these costs to different departments and individual users, so that one of the World's largest financial institutions can make substantial cost savings in relation to hard disk space.

So how did Deutsche Bank benefit from uni-X's OpenInformer software? Deutsche Bank uses one of the World's most prolific software applications, Lotus Notes, on its own Intranet, known as the db-intranet. Whether it's for handling e-mail communications, time scheduling or to-do management, Lotus Notes forms the cornerstone of Deutsche Bank's information requirements. Deutsche Bank's Intranet is one of the largest in the world with currently over 100,000 users. The db-Intranet is designed as a value-added tool to increase its efficiency within the company and effectiveness to the customer. However with the rising number of users and degree of utilisation, Deutsche Bank was looking for a tool to provide an accurate breakdown of costing information that would enable them to plan for allocation of future IT resources associated with the deployment of Lotus Notes and to economise on their current level of hardware in relation to IT storage (computer hard disk space).

OpenInformer differentiates between basic services, that are billed at a flat monthly rate, and additional variable parameters which are accounted for on the basis of usage: number of directory entries, size of mailbox and volume of mail sent. With its system-oriented programming, OpenInformer fits perfectly into the architecture of the db-intranet and can be reproduced on all the servers to be evaluated. This currently amounts to 2,000 servers in Germany alone. The data that is acquired in this way is recorded by OpenInformer, interpreted and forwarded on a cost-centre basis to the SAP for further processing.

The Lotus Notes application is just one of the ways that a tool like OpenInformer can identify the costs of running an IT network, whether it is for voice, data or both. Unlike the use of probes, OpenInformer will actually assign value to resources and can therefore detect overloading or indeed costly legacy systems. IT managers can instantly see where resources are being spent and can easily address problems of sluggish networks by pinpointing the origins of bottlenecks. In particular, OpenInformer can identify problems of disk space caused by hungry applications such as Lotus Notes and also has a 'Top Talker' module that identifies particularly heavy users.

With OpenInformer, the IT manager can identify resource usage by department, business user or individual end user. This means that you can easily set up IT cost centres that enable the accounting department to introduce a 'charge-back' function, so that departments only pay for what they use. The typical problem in large organisations is that individuals and departments often view IT as an unlimited resource. OpenInformer can effectively introduce a tariff based on a number of parameters such as time, content or volume. IT managers can improve bandwidth by charging departments according to the nature of their IT usage. For instance, an organisation could introduce lower 'charge-back' to departments or users that download information at off peak times. By spreading the IT load, the network will provide improved response times and reductions in downtime.

By re-educating employees, and with tighter controls on the level of resources being utilised, companies can make large cost savings, just by minimising the on-going investment in their IT infrastructure.

This is good news not just for the IT manager who can quickly detect when a system is delivering below par performance, but of course for the financial director who can obviously see where budgets are being spent and can anticipate significant savings in the cost of maintaining a large corporate network.

The average corporate organisation typically sees a return on investment within 6 months.