10
Architectural Principles 10 The flip side of this is that if an organization is going to
deploy 10,000 users, but only intends to start with 500 users and scale up at a steady
pace over the project timeline. They are going to look more closely at the cost of the
initial infrastructure deployment at this size over taking a larger first step. The per-user
cost at this size can hold steady as the environment scales, or it can look really skewed
in the beginning, due to a larger starting infrastructure spend.
While per-user cost can be seen as vague and almost irrelevant as a factor to determine
your infrastructure costs, you are going to be asked about this when trying to sell the
project to the business or justifying your infrastructure selection to leadership. If you
choose an alternative that has a higher up-front user cost, you need to be prepared to
explain the details. Evaluate solutions that you believe would be better suited for your
environment. Otherwise, be prepared to define the decision on how costs will play out.
A sample of these two scenarios is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1:
Entry Points Per Desktop
500 Users
$250
2500 Users
$250
2000 Users
$250
$500
$2000
1000 Users
$250
$1500
1500 Users
$250
$1000
