6.4 ISPCompany: TCO considerations

6.4.1 Software

ISPCompany buys most of its software through site licenses (when these are available) and shares savings with its clients. The benefit to their customers is that they get a larger choice for less cost to them.

ISPCompany offers a choice of two distributions to their customers: SuSE and Red Hat. The more consolidated servers there are, the cheaper they become. The more standardized the servers can be, the easier they are to maintain and create.

6.4.2 Occupancy

ISPCompany pays as part of its overhead for the IT infrastructure and utility costs. Its clients do not need the space and utility costs (and the headaches of redundancy, and so forth). They indirectly just pay a share of the costs.

Until the typical company grows big enough to have multiple sites, the IT site and personnel are usually kept where it normally does business, which tends to be a high-rent district. ISPCompany is big, and it is a business for businesses. Hence it does not have to locate in a high-rent district. It also has the ability to attract and keep more talent because it has more job opportunities in IT.

ISPCompany and its clients can save considerably when consolidating servers on the mainframe.

Refer to Appendix A, "ISPCompany" for more details on occupancy.