Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
A comprehensive financial estimate intended to help owners determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or system. It includes acquisition costs + operating costs + support costs + disposal costs.
Impact
Free software isn't free. The TCO of open source includes the high salaries of the engineers needed to maintain it.
Weinto take
Cloud lowers the acquisition cost but can explode the operating cost. We manage TCO via FinOps—real-time monitoring of cloud spend to ensure every dollar spent returns distinct value.