Understanding Energy, Network and other Overheads
Cloud-based IT strategies are often said to have positive benefit-cost ratios with regard to business efficiency, risk and environmental impacts. However, whilst benefits are often clear, resource requirements can be harder to evaluate, making valid comparisons with traditional in-house provision difficult. For example, IT functions are often not held accountable for the full energy- and infrastructure-related costs of in-house provision of services which might alternatively be out-sourced, and therefore have no incentive to control them. Often accounting systems do not even make these transparent – a major gap as they can represent as much as a third of the operating costs of Cloud providers. This presentation will review what information is needed to make valid comparisons between alternatives, especially with regard to cost, and what this requires from businesses’ accounting information systems.
Peter James, Professor of Environmental Management at Bradford University and JISC
Martin Bennett, Reader in Sustainability Accounting at the University of Gloucestershire and JISC