Glossary Topics P-T

Question 1

Describe the TCO by Business Service: Metric?

Answer 1

TCO by Business Service:
Monitor the unit or per-user TCO trends for each of your business services. In general, the unit costs should fall over time as hardware depreciates and license costs are fully amortized, along with other benefits such as reduced operating costs. They should also fall as more users adopt the service, resulting in a broader distribution of fixed costs. In some cases, TCO will rise as the result of major new releases and upgrades.

Question 2

Describe the Return on Assets (ROA): Metric?

Answer 2

Return on Assets (ROA):
A common metric applied to capital intensive companies and reflects how efficiently your assets generate income. Since IT is capital intensive, it applies equally well here.

The return on IT assets (ROITA) is calculated by dividing your annual (or trailing twelve month) operating income by your average annual IT assets (capitalized hardware, software, and other costs). The higher the return (as a percentage), the better you’re doing to derive service value (e.g., IT billings) from your fixed assets.

Question 3

What is PaaS?

Answer 3

PaaS
Platform as a service (PaaS) is a cloud computing model that delivers applications over the Internet. In a PaaS model, a cloud provider delivers hardware and software tools – usually those needed for application development – to its users as a service.

Examples include: Development tools, database management, operating systems, servers and storage, networking firewalls, data center plants/buildings.

Question 4

What is a Physical Server?

Answer 4

Physical Server
A standalone physical server running a single operating system image. The physical server typically runs one or more IT or business applications or services. It is not hosting other operating system images or otherwise acting as a hypervisor.

Question 5

What is Planning in Apptio?

Answer 5

Planning
Also known as ITP. An Apptio application that is used by IT departments to budget for their services, technology towers and projects. It also allows them to collaborate internally and with business leaders to define resource and funding requirements to support business objectives.

It enables IT budget owners, decision makers, and finance to calculate and manage your services-based unit demand with your budget and forecast. It includes financial planning (plan editing and approval, plan versions and comparisons), collaboration, Unit-based Planning, Capital Planning, and Combined Asset Register.

Question 6

What is meant by Platform?

Answer 6

Platform
Platform is a classification of an application. A platform classification indicates the application is required for the operation of two or more other applications.

NOTE: An application is not a platform if it supports one application.

Applications providing a monitoring function are not platforms. Applications providing direct support to large volumes of users (e.g. Office 365, SharePoint, various desktop applications, etc) do not qualify for platform classification.

Question 7

What is a Power User?

Answer 7

Power User
In the Apptio applications, the second highest level role. Power users have all of the permissions of admins, except configuring time, managing users, and managing roles.

Question 8

What is a Preferred Vendor?

Answer 8

Preferred Vendor
Preferred vendors have been investigated by a company and approved. Often, procurement and contracting requirements have been met and the appropriate agreements, terms and conditions may be in place. Volume purchasing commitments may be established for better pricing and additional services. Vendors must often apply to enter a company’s preferred program.

See also: Strategic Vendor, Transactional Vendor.

Question 9

What is meant by Pre-Load?

Answer 9

Pre-Load
Reports can be indexed to improve performance. However, the reports do not calculate based on every slicer or drill. You can enable pre-load in the Ribbon bar.

Question 10

What is Price?

Answer 10

Price
Quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services.

Question 11

What is a Private Cloud?

Answer 11

Private Cloud
A dedicated, elastic, scalable virtualized environment available to internal users (as opposed to public cloud). The private cloud provides virtual instances that run one or more IT or business applications or services. This is differentiated from the “Virtual” servers by the automated provisioning and related capabilities.

Question 12

What is a Product?

Answer 12

Product
A collection of Applications managed by Technology. A Product is not equivalent to an Application Family.

Question 13

What is a Project?

Answer 13

Project
In business, a project is typically defined as a collaborative enterprise, frequently involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim. In an IT Services culture, projects typically are constructed to 1) create new services, 2) change current services, or 3) retire services. Projects are constructed through a Demand Management process. The total cost impact (OpEx and Depr from CapEx) for the projects would be encompassed within the effected service. This allows a financial relationship of the project to the TCO for the service and immediate relevance of any financial changes via unit prices

In the Apptio TBM Suite, a project is an area within an Apptio environment in which you organize your modelling and reporting work. Projects contain one or more data models.

Question 14

What is SaaS?

Answer 14

SaaS
Software as a Service - an application that is hosted and provided by a service provider. The customer does not need to license the software, does not need to invest in servers and other equipment to run the application. The application is accessed remotely via an internet connection. Examples include: Apptio’s TBM Solution, Salesforce.com.

Question 15

What is the SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission)?

Answer 15

SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission)
The SEC enforces the securities laws to protect the more than 65 million American households that have turned to the securities markets to invest in their futures - whether it’s starting a family, sending kids to college, saving for retirement or attaining other financial goals.

https://www.sec.gov/

Question 16

What is a Service?

Answer 16

Service
Within a technology context: a technology enabled activity performed to the order of or benefit of someone else. Key point is that it is for someone else so the service must be communicated in the language that the user understands. A service is viewed differently by customers and end users.

Customer: People who commission, pay for, and help define the service and agree to the service levels.

End user: A person who uses the service daily.

Concepts to remember:
* A customer is usually an end user, but an end user is not necessarily a customer.
* Customers do not buy products, they buy the satisfaction of particular needs. “People don’t buy quarter-inch drills. They buy quarter-inch holes.”

Service is also the means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without ownership of specific costs and risks nor awareness of underlying resources and processes needed.

NOTE: More info can be found by referencing “ITIL standards”. Yale University’s IT Services team also has some good info here with their top-level of services reflected in the “Services” navigation menu of their web site.

https://tbmcouncil.jiveon.com/external-link.jspa?url=http://its.yale.edu/news/itil-foundations-what-service

Question 17

What is a Service Catalog?

Answer 17

Service Catalog
A listing of the services offered by an IT organization. Each service within the Catalog typically includes:
* A description of the service
* Time frames or service level agreement for fulfilling the service
* Who is entitled to request/view the service including costs (if any)
How to fulfil the service including points of contact

Question 18

What is Service Costing?

Answer 18

Service Costing
A method of costing used to find per unit cost of operations or services. Apptio also uses the term to refer to canned reports or templates for customers specific to the data being modelled.

Apptio IT Cost Transparency uses visual modelling and self-service analytics to transform an IT department’s general ledger cost data into the true, fully-burdened costs of your services, technology towers, projects and other important dimensions of IT. It helps IT departments control costs, better align expenditures to value, and invest more in innovation and agility.

Question 19

What is a Service Portfolio?

Answer 19

Service Portfolio
A collection of services with common characteristics such as:
* Business goal
Measures of success or value

Question 20

What is a Service Taxonomy?

Answer 20

Service Taxonomy
Service Taxonomy is a framework used to organize and create a hierarchy of Services into parent containers of which labels the supported clients can understand and be empowered to have discussions and make decisions about. A taxonomy has between 3-4 layers. The beginning point of a taxonomy is the Service Offering level and rolls into higher levels within the taxonomy. Contributing elements to Services Offerings are outside of the scope of a Service Taxonomy and should be managed elsewhere with the understanding they should ultimately map to a defined Service Offering that is tracked within the Service Taxonomy. Other Services not represented in the Service Taxonomy may be represented elsewhere, but only those represented in the Service Taxonomy will be exposed to Technology clients.

NOTE: The TBM Council’s service taxonomy is available here. Evergreen Systems has published some decks regarding “Service Taxonomy Essentials” here and here at SlideShare.

https://tbmcouncil.jiveon.com/external-link.jspa?url=https://www.tbmcouncil.org/learn-tbm/tbm-taxonomy

https://tbmcouncil.jiveon.com/external-link.jspa?url=http://www.slideshare.net/Evergreen_Systems/what-is-a-service-taxonomy-and-why-do-i-need-one

https://tbmcouncil.jiveon.com/external-link.jspa?url=http://www.slideshare.net/Evergreen_Systems/it-service-catalog-taxonomy-essentials

Question 21

What is Showback?

Answer 21

Showback
Around 2010, the concept of IT showback emerged to keep the advantages of chargeback without some of its drawbacks. Showback consists of providing IT management, departments, and corporate management with an analysis of the IT costs due to each department, without actually cross-charging those costs.

The pressure on the departments to limit their usage is less direct, but awareness of the costs usually causes department heads and senior management to question why a department is “spending” more than another in IT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IT_chargeback_and_showback

An IT Showback system is a method of tracking data center utilization rates of an organization’s business units or end users. IT showback is similar to IT chargeback, but the metrics are for informational purposes only, and no one is billed.

https://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/definition/IT-showback

Question 22

What is a SKU (Stock Keeping Unit)?

Answer 22

SKU (Stock Keeping Unit)
A stock keeping unit (SKU) is a product and service identification code for a store or product, often displayed as a machine-readable bar
code that helps track the item for inventory. A stock keeping unit (SKU) does not need to be assigned to physical products in inventory.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stock-keeping-unit-sku.asp

Question 23

What is an SLA?

Answer 23

SLA (Service Level Agreement)
A service-level agreement is a negotiated agreement between two parties, where one is the customer and the other is the service provider. This can be a legally binding formal or an informal “contract” (for example, internal department relationships).

Operational-level agreements or OLAs, are used by internal support groups or services to support consumer services with SLAs. The purpose of the OLA is to help ensure that the underpinning activities that are performed by a number of support team components are clearly aligned to provide the intended SLA.

Question 24

What does SLT stand for?

Answer 24

SLT
Acronym: Senior Leadership Team.

Question 25

What is SSO?

Answer 25

SSO - Single Sign On
Gathering credentials from a user once and authenticating to multiple disparate systems without prompting the user for additional authentication information.

All strategic vendors are also preferred vendors. The difference is that there are additional attributes that are of value to the company that may include: key buyer-supplier relationship, single source, joint technologies, legacy tooling, sustainability goals and other differentiating or important characteristics. When a company needs products or services, it turns to strategic and preferred vendors first.

Question 26

What is a Sub-Component?

Answer 26

Sub-Component
A sub-classification of an asset tracked within CMDB (or CMS) and sub-ordinate to a Component.

Question 27

What is a Supplier (Vendor, Partner)?

Answer 27

Supplier (Vendor, Partner)
Supplier is the generic term for 3rd party suppliers whereas Vendor is a tactical relationship and Partner is a strategic relationship.

Question 28

Describe SW or S/W?

Answer 28

SW or S/W or Software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provides the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it. The term encompasses both applications and software licenses. The table below compares application software and system software.

From a financial perspective, the software cost pool includes software amortization (from capitalized application development projects), software expense (e.g. software purchases <$1k), licensing and maintenance & support.

However, in the Apptio service costing model, the applications object is an IT Resource Tower and includes the rollup up of the software cost pools from all application software licenses that are required to make the application usable by end users. System software costs, likewise, are part of the software cost pool and roll up into the ITRT they support such as Data Center, Storage, Server, etc.

Question 29

What does “Sweating the Assets” mean?

Answer 29

Sweating the Assets
“Sweating the assets” is variously defined as cutting costs, virtualizing, or getting “as much use as possible out of what you already possess.” The first definition leads to the reductionist approach: cut services, resources, and/or staff. In today’s market, compensation is often a major portion, if not the largest portion, of an organization’s budget, standing out as a likely target to cut. Some institutions are thus undertaking reductions in force in IT organizations and elsewhere. But Hitachi’s Hu Yoshida sounds a note of warning about cutbacks: “‘Sweating your assets’ may help you survive the downturn, but it can work against you when the recovery happens and you are caught short.”

Three years used to be a standard life span for an office PC. Notice how you’ve had yours for more like four or five? It’s called “sweating the assets.” As tech budgets decrease, companies are making their machines work overtime. Agilent CEO Ned Barnholt says his chip manufacturer clients now push their testing equipment to run at 90% to 95% capacity, vs. the old standard of 80%. (This revved-up rate is more cost efficient, but some cite a danger of longer-term performance declines.) The Gartner Group says financial companies are also sweating, using up to 80% of available space on servers, vs. the 30% to 50% that was acceptable a few years ago. Through a complicated manoeuvre called “pooling,” companies can now do that while avoiding the choice between savings or speed.

Question 30

What is “Sweep-Out”?

Answer 30

Sweep-Out
The act of reconciling residuals that represent the published rates and volumes to the actual usage of IT Services on a periodic basis.

Sweep-outs can be performed on a monthly, quarterly, or annually.

See also: True-Up, Residual.

Question 31

What is a Tag?

Answer 31

Tag
In an Apptio model, a tag is a filter applied to a unit driver. You can apply tags to unit drivers that you create, so that in models where objects have more than one driver, you can roll up only the unit drivers that share a certain tag. Tagging a unit driver creates a metric, so you can filter the model. Tags force a significant amount of additional calculations, and can affect performance. Use them judiciously.

A typical application for unit driver tags is in a model where each object contains drivers representing both fixed and variable costs. The drivers that represent fixed costs could have the tag FIXED, while the variable ones could be tagged VARIABLE. You can then roll up the fixed and variable costs separately.

Question 32

What does TBM stand for?

Answer 32

TBM (Technology Business Management)
Technology Business Management - processes whereby IT measures its performance and alignment with business goals and strategies. Includes functions around financial, supply, demand and governance.

A discipline for managing the business of IT through an integrated view of technology cost, performance, supply and demand.

Technology Business Management (TBM) provides a practical, applied discipline for maximizing the value of the IT investment portfolio by enabling technology leaders and their business partners to collaborate on business aligned decisions. Relying on transparency, TBM defines a foundation for managing supply and demand by enabling financial and performance trade-offs needed to optimize run-the-business spending and improve change-the-business investments.

Technology Business Management (TBM) is a decision-making discipline for maximizing the business value of IT spending. TBM blends financial transparency with service and product constructs to give technology leaders and their business partners the facts needed to collaborate on business objectives.

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/transforming-it-through-technology-business-management/

Question 33

What is a TBMA?

Answer 33

TBMA (Technology Business Management Analyst)
Within the context of the Apptio TBM Suite, a Technology Business Management Analyst (TBM Analyst) - power user.

Question 34

What is the TBMO?

Answer 34

TBMO (Technology Business Management Office)
The TBM Office is typically organized into two roles: The TBM Program Director who leads the office and TBM Support who drive regular activities. The TBM Program Director is responsible for the overall strategy of the TBM Solution. The TBM Support is comprised of 1 or 2 people and is responsible for the ongoing maintenance of the TBM Solution.

Question 35

What does TCO stand for?

Answer 35

TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
Includes the following: hardware, software, labor, facilities, data center, external services, both capital (through Depr) and operating costs and direct/indirect (shared) costs. Includes other system operations software if the software is part of the base operating requirements since the server will not work without the software.

Total Cost of Ownership represents the fully burdened or rolled-up cost (inclusive of Labor, Hardware, Software, Facilities, Utilities, etc) of an item. TCO can be represented for a Service, Application, Application Family, Product, Server, Support Ticket, etc.

Question 36

Describe the ‘TCO by Business Service metric?

Answer 36

TCO by Business Service:
Monitor the unit or per-user TCO trends for each of your business services. In general, the unit costs should fall over time as hardware depreciates and license costs are fully amortized, along with other benefits such as reduced operating costs. They should also fall as more users adopt the service, resulting in a broader distribution of fixed costs. In some cases, TCO will rise as the result of major new releases and upgrades.

Question 37

In Apptio, what is a Template?

Answer 37

Template
In an Apptio model, a template is a property of an object in a model that identifies a template assigned to the object. Templates often are accompanied by data sets, metrics, and reports.

When you assign a template to an object, Apptio automatically creates the accompanying data sets, metrics, and reports. You assign a stereotype to an object at the time you add the object to a model.

Question 38

What is a Time Unit?

Answer 38

Time Unit
Also known as a time period. In an Apptio project, a period of time that specifies the granularity for time-based calculations. The supported time units are: months, quarters, and years.

Question 39

What is a Transactional Vendor?

Answer 39

Transactional Vendor
All remaining suppliers of products and services are considered transactional. Depending on the procurement controls in place, staff may only be allowed to purchase from transactional suppliers if the products or services are not offered through the company’s strategic or preferred vendors.

See also: Preferred Vendor, Strategic Vendor.

Question 40

What is True-Up?

Answer 40

True-Up
The act of reconciling residuals that represent the published rates and volumes to the actual usage of IT services on a periodic basis. Can be performed monthly, quarterly, or yearly.

See also: Sweep-Out, Residuals.

Question 41

What does TTB stand for?

Answer 41

TTB (Transform the Business)
Transform the Business; one of three categories for analyzing IT investments from a portfolio view.

TTB value is about strategic business alignment and enabling new business capability.

The TTB investments help the business serve new customer segments, offer new products and deliver new services. Many CIOs want to shift the allocation of their IT budget from operational RTB (Run the Business) spend to more impactful TTB spend.

Question 42

What is Turnkey?

Answer 42

Turnkey
One of the special modes of carrying out international business is a turnkey project. It is a contract under which a firm agrees to fully design, construct and equip a manufacturing/ business/ service facility and turn the project over to the purchaser when it is ready for operation for a remuneration.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/What-is-a-turnkey-project/articleshow/2021394.cms