· Amit Kothari
· Finance Workflows
What is total cost of ownership?
Total cost of ownership equals purchase price plus lifetime operating costs. For IT deployments, hidden costs include installation, migration, licenses, support, training, cyber security, backup systems, utilities for cooling servers, insurance, additional personnel, eventual replacement, and decommissioning. Cloud providers simplify TCO analysis by bundling costs into monthly fees, but you must still verify their track records on downtime, security, and support responsiveness.