Strategic Architect Framework: Microsoft CSA Training Program

TCO Calculator: Working Template

Module 02: Financial Fluency
Important: The most common reason TCO arguments fail in CFO review is an asymmetric legacy column. Costs that are invisible in the legacy column (facilities, DR, key-person fragility, licensing cliffs) appear visible in the cloud column. Complete every line of the legacy column before filling in the Azure column. Use ranges where precision isn't available: "[$X–$Y]" is more credible than fabricated precision.
Customer
Comparison period
Currency
Prepared by

Infrastructure Costs

Cost Item Legacy: Annual × Years Legacy: Total
Server hardware (purchase + depreciation)$$
Storage hardware$$
Network hardware (switches, load balancers)$$
Hardware refresh (estimated end-of-life)$$
Data center / co-location rent$$
Power & cooling (PUE factor applied)$$
Physical security & facilities staff$$
Infrastructure Subtotal$

Software Licensing

Product License Type (perpetual / SA) Annual Cost Total Period Cost
OS (Windows Server / RHEL / etc.)$$
Database (SQL Server / Oracle / etc.)$$
Middleware / app server$$
Backup & recovery$$
Monitoring & management tools$$
Security tooling (AV, IDS, SIEM)$$
Licensing Subtotal$

Operational Labor

Role FTE Count Fully Loaded Annual Cost % Time on Legacy Allocated Cost
Infrastructure / SysAdmin$%$
DBA$%$
Security / patching$%$
Network operations$%$
Help desk / Tier 1 (infra-related)$%$
Labor Subtotal (annual)$
Labor Total (period)$

Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity

Cost ItemAnnualPeriod Total
DR site hardware & hosting$$
DR testing labor (annual drills)$$
Backup software & storage$$
RTO / RPO gap exposure (downtime cost × probability)$$
DR Subtotal$

Azure Cloud (Comparison Column)

Azure Cost CategoryAnnualPeriod TotalNotes
Compute (Reserved Instances)$$
Storage$$
Networking (egress, VPN, ExpressRoute)$$
PaaS services (database, cache, etc.)$$
Azure Monitor / Security Center$$
Azure Backup / Site Recovery$$
Migration professional services (one-time)N/A$
Training & reskilling (one-time)N/A$
Reduced FTE labor (savings vs. legacy)$($(Credit
Azure Total$

Summary Comparison

Legacy Total Cost (period)$
Azure Total Cost (period)$
Net Savings (Legacy − Azure)$
Break-even MonthMonth ___
3-Year ROI___%

CFO Framing (one paragraph, ≤5 acronyms)