3.3 Total Cost plan

Comparing the pricing on IBM's and Atlassian's websites will quickly show that Jira is many times cheaper than Rational ClearQuest. But licensing is only one side of the medal. The total cost of ownership comprises a range of other cost factors that your organization faces to run and support a software product.

The wikipedia article on Total Costs of Ownership gives an extensive overview of the different cost components that should be considered when calculating the total costs of a system. You can use these categories to compare the actual costs of your IBM Rational system vs the a Jira instance.

Consider the following items:

• • Computer hardware and programs
    • Network hardware and software
    • Server hardware and software
    • Workstation hardware and software
    • Installation and integration of hardware and software
    • Purchasing research
    • Warranties and licenses
    • License tracking - compliance
    • Migration expenses
    • Risks: susceptibility to vulnerabilities, availability of upgrades, patches and future licensing policies, etc.
  • Operation expenses
    • Infrastructure (floor space)
    • Electricity (for related equipment, cooling, backup power)
    • Testing costs
    • Downtime, outage and failure expenses
    • Diminished performance (i.e. users having to wait, diminished money-making ability)
    • Security (including breaches, loss of reputation, recovery and prevention)
    • Backup and recovery process
    • Technology training
    • Audit (internal and external)
    • Insurance
    • Information technology personnel
    • Corporate management time
  • Long term expenses
    • Replacement
    • Future upgrade or scalability expenses
    • Decommissioning