Hi all!

I am curious to know if someone has implemented some kind of cost split % from applications to services layer.

For example, if an application is mapped/used by two different services, be able to do a 30 - 70 split. And where the information of those percentages is stored.

We bring the applications-services mapping from our enterprise architect tool, and I wonder if having the % split there is the right place. As this mean, no additional maintenance of that info in Apptio is required.

I have thought of having in Apptio as well, but I see the risk that if the application-services mapping changes in the EA, how we would learn about this in TBM Office, it will require every times there are updates on this mappings, that the information is manually maintained in the EA and in Apptio as well.

Any idea or to learn how you have done it, is very welcome!

Thanks!

Guada

Hi @Guada Murua, we have done something similar. As we are a Chargeback house, our Business Partners have the ability to go and change such allocations anytime something triggers it. We therefore consume such information on a monthly basis along with the other information and is modelled in that way. 

Hope this clarifies. Let me know if you want to see what I have done and happy to walk you through.

Hi Suresh, thank you for your answer! I have one additional question, are the architects involved when the allocation % are changed in the EA tool? or the Business Partners can directly do that themselves?

Thanks!!

Hi Guadalupe, At the moment we map directly to Business Units instead of capabilities. The Business Partners have the ability to change the % directly. 

Hi,

We deployed an allocation from Application to Business Capability (using the Services modeling approach) to give a view of costs supporting different Business Capabilities. The data to drive this is stored in the EA Architecture tool, and as we do for Application data download the mapping monthly and use allocation from the EA tool.

We see this as just another data set that Apptio uses to allocate costs to different views. I would certainly not attempt to have the allocation replicated in Apptio. NB we have automated the majority of our interfaces from data sources so once created there is very little effort to update the data each month and most of the time is spent verify the data rather than collecting data.

Hi John, thank you for your answer!! this is very helpful, and it makes sense that the data is not in Apptio, but just brought into Apptio from the EA tool monthly, same as the other data sources.

Thanks!

For a large chunk of our production applications (~100) we have a datamart that provides a snapshot of the number of transactions generated by each business service onto the various applications.

We have configured Apptio to pivot that data and that volume of transactions allows us to dynamically determine the proportion of each application that goes to every related business service.

This implements a kind of consumption-based model that we find very appropriate.

I might write a more extensive post to describe this, possibly as a "Bill, the TBM Guy" story. I'll throw in some tables to clarify the concept.

Hi Guillermo, thanks for your answer! that sounds really great, having a consumption-based model.

I am looking forward to read more details if you decide to write the post.

Thanks!

You may want to take a look at this post (@Mary Robinson), @Guada Murua.

I loved the post! thanks!