The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) reflects the total expense involved in purchasing, deploying, and maintaining a computerized standards based formative testing solution for enabling data driven decision making throughout the organization.
As school boards and administrators demand predictability and accountability for the total cost of hardware, software, maintanenance fees, support personnel and other typically hidden system costs, TCO has become a popular decision-making tool when choosing a standards based formative testing solution.
Although easyTEST delivers many more benefits than just lowest overall cost of ownership, it is an excellent tool for the IT department or business office to consider when comparing information.
Today, many school districts only plan for up-front costs of applications, then become overwhelmed by the never-ending costs of implementation, IT support, upgrades, OS upgrades, network troubleshooting, backups, and server management. Microsoft estimates the initial hardware and software costs to be 1/4 of the total cost of ownership.
Source: Microsoft
How does easyTEST reduce your total cost of ownership?
Since easyTEST is an online service, there is no software or hardware to install, buy, replace, support, or upgrade. All you need is a web browser and a connection to the Internet to use the service.
| Total Cost of Ownership Over 3 Years | ||
|---|---|---|
| Solution Component | Local Solution | easyTEST |
| Student Size | 3,000 | 3,000 |
| Number of Users (Teachers) | 150 | Unlimited |
| Testing Software License | $9,000-$15,000 | $9,000 |
| End User Licenses | $38,000-$75,000 | $0 |
| Software Maintenance Agreement | $30,000-$45,000 | $0 |
| Initial Data Migration Costs | $25,000-$45,000 | $0 |
| Data Upload Fees | $60,000 | $0 |
| OS and Database License | $1,000-$5,000 | $0 |
| Database and Application Servers | $2,000-$6,000 | $0 |
| Implementation | $1,000-$2,000 | $1,000 (optional) |
| IT Personnel Support over 3 years | $50,000-$100,000 | $0 |
| Training Cost (Admin) | $2,000-$3,000 | $2,000 (optional) |
| Training Cost (End Users) | $1,500-$3,000 | $0 |
| Totals ($) | $159,000-$359,000 | $12,000 over 3 years |
| Savings (%) | 0 | 92% - 97% over 3 years |
Number of students in the district.
To enable data driven decisions throughout the district requires that all teachers have access to online reports. Other solutions require licensing fees on a per user basis increasing your costs as the solution is adopted throughout the district.
Your easyTEST service includes an unlimited number of users. Triand believes that adoption is key for driving effective data driven decision making throughout the district and charging per user inhibits the adoption process.
Other solutions charge $2.00 to $5.00 per student as in initial up front licensing cost.
Your easyTEST service includes all licensing costs.
Other solutions require an initial licensing fee of $250 to $500 per user depending upon the functionality delivered (item bank questions, create an item, create a test, etc).
Your easyTEST service includes item bank questions, create an item, create a test and more for an unlimited number of users.
Other solutions charge 15% to 20% yearly for software maintenance fees. For example, if the district initial purchase for all software is $50,000 then the yearly maintenance fee will be $7,500-$10,000 and the three year cost will be $22,500-$30,000.
Your easyTEST service includes includes all maintenance fees. Typically your yearly solutions subscription fee is less than other solutions yearly maintenance fees instantly saving you money.
Other solutions charge 20% of the first years cost as initial data migration fees.
Your solutions service includes initial uploading of your current items. For and additional cost the easyCONNECT service can be purchased to automatically connect your student information system to easyTEST.
Other solutions charge you each time you want to upload new information to your data warehouse. Because of this cost, most districts limit uploading data to just four times a year.
Your easyTEST service includes an unlimited amount of data uploading.
This is just the baseline cost for getting started with a solution.
As your district adopts formative testing and associated data driven decision making and the number of users increases you will need to upgrade to more powerful hardware. Because OS and Database licenses are priced according to the power of the hardware your costs for the OS and Database license will dramatically increase.
Your easyTEST service includes all OS and Database license fees for an unlimited number of users.
This is just the baseline cost for getting started with a solution.
As your district adopts data driven decision making and the number of users increases you will need to upgrade to more powerful hardware.
Your easyTEST service is already scaled to support an unlimited number of users.
Installation and configuring a local hardware and software solution involves a melange of hidden costs. Other solutions charge an inital getting started fee and then an additional hourly consulting fee.
Your easyTEST service includes everything needed to get started. Additionally, you may elect to purchase Triand's configuration walk through service where a dedicated Triand customer support walks you through configuring your easyTEST standards based formative testing solution.
Keeping a local solution running requires constant attention to many support activities. Software licenses, network connectivity and hardware upgrades are just a few of the many tasks an IT department performs when supporting a local solution.
Your easyTEST service is hosted and maintained at Triand and all associated hosting and maintenance costs are included with the service.
Other solutions charge you to train you very first user: the system administrator.
Your easyTEST service includes everything needed for a complete solution, including initial training for the system administrator. Additionally, you may elect to train additional personnel for system administration as your district grows.
Other solutions charge you to trian your teachers. Actually, over time this is a very significant cost.
Your easyTEST service includes online seminars for your teachers.