Total cost of ownership (TCO) as an important consideration for law departments when they invest in software

Total cost of ownership (TCO) should be a calculation done by all law departments before they select software. An executive of Datacert wrote that the definition of TCO “includes all the upfront costs of procurement, including hardware and software, as well as ongoing operational expenditures such as training, administration, maintenance and system scaling to support growth.” Another person in the same article in Met. Corp. Counsel, March 2011 at 33,.added space, energy and HVAC. You want to have a handle on the all-in costs of the finalists before you choose.

It appears I have never referred to the term TCO directly but I have addressed the idea and some of its components (See my post of Aug. 14, 2005: costs of training when software is installed; Sept. 10, 2005: costs of litigation support software; Dec. 31, 2008: 10 questions to ask about software offerings; April 8, 2009: costs of team to choose software needs to be figured in; Oct. 28, 2009: open source software may actually be open wallet; and Feb. 8, 2010: high software maintenance charges.).