The Alure of "Free"

"I already have an ELA with ABC Company and they have a solution for Private Cloud / DevOps.  We need to try it first."

"I'm a big fan of open source.  It's cheaper to go that way."

Have you ever made any of the above statements?  If so, no harm no foul, but I'd like to take you a layer deeper to understand the true Total Cost of Ownership story for the options you may have under consideration to achieve your "next evolution" in IT delivery.

A theory becomes fact once it's been proven enough times in real life.  So I won't posit this as a theory, but as a proven fact:  Currently, there are exceedingly few offerings on the market for automated IT Infrastructure and Platform delivery which:

1. Stand up and configure quickly - from install to in-use.  Most take 6-18 months, no matter what the vendor advertises.  Very few take only 1-2 months.
2. Won't take a high-dollar (as well as high project duration) consulting SOW to achieve the end state you were promised.
3. Won't take 2-4 FTEs to administer ... because the "solution" in question is really made up of 6-9 products behind the scenes.
4. Won't take an Act of Congress to make a change without vendor consultants and another lengthy project duration, and the cost that comes with it.

So, let's take a real scenario, although I will remove the company and specific vendor names to "protect the innocent".  This is just for illustration purposes anyway ...

Option A:  "We already have something through a large EA we signed last year" or "We're going to give open source a try."

1. Software licensing cost = $0 ... free!  But don't celebrate yet.
2. 3 years of annual software maintenance = $300,000 ($100,000 x 3 years)
3. Services to enable end state = $1,000,000
4. FTE equivalent man-hours needed to support for 3 years = $1,350,000 ($150,000 x 3 FTEs x 3 years)
5. Ongoing services to make changes, adjustments = $300,000
6. Opportunity cost related to time-to-reach-end-state = efficiency gains and agility returns not realized for 6-15 months (assumes a 9-18 month implementation) = $3,000,000+ (this is a SWAG, but I think we can agree that it's likely a conservative SWAG)

Total Cost of Option A:  $4,600,000+

Option B:  "We're going with a proven solution for IT Service delivery"

1. Software licensing cost = $500,000
2. 3 years of annual software maintenance = $300,000 ($100,000 x 3 years)
3. Services to enable end state = $50,000
4. FTE equivalent man-hours needed to support for 3 years = $225,000 ($150,000 x 0.5 FTEs x 3 years)
5. Ongoing services to make changes, adjustments = $20,000
6. Opportunity cost related to time-to-reach-end-state = efficiency gains and agility returns not realized for 1-2 months (assumes a 1-2 month implementation) = $100,000

Total Cost of Option B:  $1,195,000

S/W cost is just the tip of the iceberg

As you can see, the difference over a 3 year term is staggering.  It costs about 4X (at least) more to implement the "free" solutions. 

Few vendors - VMware is one of them - can state with a straight face that they can deliver Option B.  The others you're considering ... all Option A. 

My Mom told me, "There's no such thing as a free lunch", and Grampa said, "You get what you pay for."