Information Technology Infrastructure and Services

Software cost estimates must also include IT infrastructure and services. Even systems such as ships, aircraft, and mission control centers, with their significant hardware investment, have major IT infrastructure and services components. For some IT systems 90 percent of their costs are in the infrastructure and services required to support and run them. Yet in reports on costs, successes, failures, and challenges in IT systems, the vast majority of the systems typically refer to the software portions only, ignoring the IT services and infrastructure components.

IT infrastructure can be difficult to estimate because numerous definitions exist. One useful definition is that infrastructure consists of the equipment, systems, software, and services used in common across an organization, regardless of mission, or program. IT infrastructure also serves as the foundation for mission, or program-specific systems and capabilities.

The estimator should ask the following questions when estimating IT infrastructure and services:

  • What is the cost of the system engineering to define the IT system?

  • How much computing power is needed to support a system?

  • How many help desk personnel are needed to support the users?

  • How do buy and lease decisions affect expenses and profitability?

  • What are the potential tradeoffs between technology and costs?

  • What kind of application initiatives are needed to support the business?

  • How many vendors and how much vendor interface is required to run the IT operation?

  • How many sites does the IT infrastructure support?

  • Are the requirements clearly defined?

A quote from an IT system vendor is rarely sufficient for IT cost estimation. The cost estimator will still need to consider these elements:

  • help desk support services supplied internally for applications and equipment;

  • facilities costs;

  • costs of on-going installation, maintenance, repair, and troubleshooting; and

  • employee training, both formal training and self-training.

Many vendors offer IT infrastructure either as “software as a service” or as “cloud computing.”69 The decision to opt for vendor-operated IT infrastructure hardware requires weighing the convenience of utilizing external resources that become the responsibility of an outside organization against issues such as loss of control and security, as well as accepting potential resource sharing with other users. Such vendor-operated infrastructure does not usually eliminate the costs of ongoing IT services to provide users help desk support, local computing, setup training, and other infrastructure services. The cost estimator must be aware that these costs should be considered, whether the infrastructure is to be owned by the government, leased, or owned and operated by vendors under contract with the government.

Many of the risks that affect software cost estimating apply to IT infrastructure. For example, in estimating the costs of any effort, a consideration should be made whether the risks of the investment justify the inclusion of an independent verification and validation contractor. In situations where the risks are very high, such as potential loss of life, the overall schedule may need to be extended to accommodate the additional reviews and testing required.

  1. Cloud computing refers to information that resides in servers on the Internet and is downloaded temporarily onto various hardware devices such as desktop and notebook computers, entertainment centers, and handheld telephones.↩︎