When people talk about the technology view in TBM, the focus often drifts toward tooling, architecture, or performance metrics. But that’s missing the bigger opportunity. The TBM technology view isn’t about building better infrastructure, it’s about helping IT leaders and architects see technology through a business-aligned lens of cost, consumption, and value.
So, what does that lens actually look like?
Imagine reviewing your cloud services not just in terms of uptime or CPU specs, but by asking: How much does this service cost us each month? Who’s using it? What’s the trend? That’s the TBM view, its a structured snapshot that connects the raw technical capability to the financial footprint and business use.
It turns what was once just storage or a VM into something that can be discussed in service reviews, portfolio decisions, or investment planning. And when that data is standardised and surfaced consistently, it builds the trust needed to have serious conversations about scaling, rationalising, or reinvesting.
Technology Services Must Be Visible and Credible
In a mature TBM environment, business stakeholders interact with IT through the service catalogue and their expectation is simple, technology service prices should reduce over time. That might sound unrealistic, but it’s grounded in economic truth. Advancements in infrastructure, automation, cloud platforms, and vendor competition naturally reduce the cost per unit of capability. TBM needs to make this visible.
The key isn’t just lowering costs, it’s linking service price to volume. If a team consumes 200 units of cloud compute or 300TB of storage, they need a unit of measure that connects usage with spend. Without it, pricing appears arbitrary, and trust in the model erodes.
Applications vs Technology Services
One TBM principle often misunderstood is that not every application should be priced independently. Some apps are part of larger services, others don’t have measurable usage at the business layer. In these cases, TBM helps reframe the cost around the underlying technology service, such as the hosting platform, middleware, or shared infrastructure it relies on.
This distinction avoids pricing noise and supports meaningful discussion. Rather than fighting over application charge-back models, TBM shifts the focus to service-level pricing that aligns with how the business consumes and values technology.
Change Happens — TBM Makes It Manageable
Technology doesn’t stand still. Whether you’re introducing AI tooling, decommissioning a data centre, or migrating to cloud, TBM plays a critical role in smoothing the financial impact of change.
For new technology services, the initial cost is often higher due to investment, setup, and early-stage complexity. TBM helps by projecting long-term steady-state pricing, ensuring early adopters aren’t penalised, and avoiding sharp distortions in service costs. Similarly, when exiting legacy services, TBM provides a way to keep pricing consistent throughout the transition with incentive models if delays occur.
This isn’t just accounting, it’s strategic alignment. You’re using financial clarity to manage the lifecycle of technology, not just maintain it.
Enterprise Architecture and TBM | Stronger Together
There’s growing recognition that Enterprise Architecture (EA) and TBM can and should work together. EA maps the current and future states of business and IT capability. TBM provides the financial lens over that map. When integrated, this unlocks something powerful with the ability to assess strategic choices not just by fit or feasibility, but by financial impact.
In practice, this means your architecture decisions are no longer based on diagrams and roadmaps alone, they’re backed by projected cost models, lifecycle data, and consumption trends. This elevates architecture conversations into strategic planning territory, where IT leaders can present options with real business weight.
🔗 Further Information.
- Pitfalls of IT Budgeting and Forecasting Apptio
- Links to Part 1 & Part 2 below