I was at dinner with a colleague a few evenings ago and we ordered our meals and dessert as normal. However, upon presentation of the bill we were shocked at the cost. When travelling my organization, like most, has daily meal limits so we monitor the expenditure to ensure we spend within the daily allowance.  Imagine our shock when we received the check and found that the mustard salmon was $24.95 not $17.95 and my steak was $10 more than the menu price. Now when you eat at a restaurant you expect to pay for the meal and you make decisions based on your budget, appetite, specialty of the house, etc.. The value of the meal is defined by how much you enjoyed the meal and its perceived worth to you.  Now if the food was free I would have probably made different choices, Lobster looked good, but as I was working within the budget I moderated my choices (if I had of known we had the wrong prices I would have ordered the lasagna).

This experience reminded me of the blog that I wrote in July 2010 - "I want my IT for free" which talked about the visit of one my dearest friends and his experience with his teenage daughter and his iPhone. Fundamentally, if IT is free there is little perceived value and the potential for unabated abuse is a risk, a scenario that many IT organizations have identified. The recession showed us that focus must be placed on the expenditure, predominantly OPEX dollars being spent to sustain the business. In the business few controls exist in comparison to the excellent processes used in Project and Portfolio Management to determine investments in growing the business. With the migration to Cloud Computing, including the use of SaaS which are paid for with "green dollars" (not internal transfer charging which I call brown dollars), forward thinking IT organizations are clearly identifying the costs within their Service Catalogs and allowing the consumer to choose, just like I did at the restaurant.

Talking to a large financial organization recently, they told me that the Service Catalog is being used to support their cultural need to change the manner IT and the Business interact. They are already seeing the business make smart choices in service selections and this is only the beginning of the journey. I will update you as they move through their journey.

So back to the restaurant. We queried the waiter when we got the check and he walked away and checked the prices and came back with a menu that identified we had been charged the correct price, paid the check and left.  I suspect we had been initially given the lunch menu and as I enjoyed the food so much (i.e perceived value), I am going to take a trip back for lunch. I will let you know the outcome.

The takeaway from the experience is, if your menu doesn't have prices, your IT is probably for free and also check you received the correct menu!