For organizations employing a service-oriented IT infrastructure, a reliable and integrated method of calculating and billing for file storage use is a critical capability.
For service providers, the ability to deliver accurate and transparent calculations of file storage use is clearly fundamental to the business model.
Needs Fulfilled
| The establishment of a fair, transparent and automated billing system for file services that is based on file service use or on space allocated. |
| The ability to provide customers with self-service access to detailed information about the source of their file service costs; analyses of the content stored by members of the customer organization. |
| Implementation of notional billing, or ‘showback’, as an initial step in service cost distribution – requiring significantly less change management effort when the organization does not currently practice internal billing for other services. |
Unique Features
The following features are only available in the File Service Cost Distribution solution area:
| Cost Dashboards in the self-service interface File service use statistics and details can be represented in terms of cost. Budgets can be set and usage/growth against budgets highlighted. |
| Integration with billing systems The possibility to integrate NSS with existing billing systems, ensuring an end-to-end solution to the need to distribute costs for file service provision. |
Feature Sample
| The ability to scan the full unstructured data environment (SMB/CIFS file shares, NFS exports, SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, Azure, etc.) allows for file service usage levels (TB of data stored) to be used for cost calculations. |
| Using the features available in the Data Stewardship Framework, associate file service use with specific cost centers, departments, organizational units or customers. |
| The ability to assign storage space (quota) to individual users or groups allows for storage allocation to be used for cost calculations. |
| Using AD integration, share name manipulation, programmatic integration with third party solutions, external data sources, or manually entered labels, creates the necessary relationship between the allocated space and the associated cost-center, project, business unit or customer. |
| A documented database schema (MS SQL) and APIs ensure that integration with existing billing systems is straightforward. |
| Relevant users/groups (up to 20 individual users) can be given access to a self-service interface that provides analyses of how they are using the file service – enabling them to assume control over future costs. |
