Post 12/05/2008

  • taking TCO to the classroom

    One of the biggest challenges school districts face is determining the level of tech support they need to adequately manage their computers and networks-and how much they can afford. Of course, from a Total Cost of Ownership perspective, if a school district does not provide adequate tech support, the district will pay the price somewhere: in a reduction of teacher productivity when teacher have to solve their own computer problems, in the need for additional staff training when teachers decide they can't rely on the network to be up, in the cost of wasted time and labor when administrative functions can't be managed reliably on the district's network.

    From 1983-1991, IBM Corp. and Digital Equipment Corp. worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop a formula for calculating the number of staff needed to support a distributed computing environment. This effort, known as Project Athena, came up with this formula:

    tags: TCO, technologyplanning, Technology_Department, technology_staffing


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