Data Management Glossary
Showback
What is Showback Reporting?
Showback is a method of tracking data center utilization rates of an organization’s business units or end users. Similar to IT chargeback, the metrics for showback are for informational purposes only; no one is billed. Some organizations refer to showback reporting as “shameback.”
The Showback model aims to allocate the costs of IT resources and services to the business units or departments that consume them. It helps organizations to better understand and track their IT expenses and make informed decisions about resource allocation and utilization. Showback involves collecting data on IT usage and presenting it in a way that is transparent and easily understandable for business stakeholders. This information can be used to make informed decisions about future investments in IT infrastructure, as well as to negotiate service level agreements and establish chargeback policies.
In the white paper Getting Departments to Care About Storage Savings, the Showback model is explained.
With Komprise analytics-driven unstructured data management, authorized departmental users can monitor and understand their data usage (examples: how many and what type of files, where stored and biggest consumers) in an interactive dashboard. This is an essential part of a showback model.
Read the blog post: Komprise brings data storage insights to business teams and departments.
What Does a Showback Report from Komprise Looks Like?
Read the blog post and learn more about Komprise Analysis.
Read the blog post: New Reports on Unstructured Data and Storage Costs from Komprise.
Why is showback reporting important to manage data storage costs?
Showback reporting is important for managing data storage costs because it creates visibility, accountability, and better decision-making across the enterprise. Here’s why it matters:
- Transparency of Usage and Costs: Most storage teams know total spend, but not who is consuming it. Showback reporting breaks down storage usage by department, project, or user, making costs visible to the people generating the data.
- Accountability Without Blame: Unlike chargeback (where IT bills back costs), showback simply shows usage and cost allocations. This avoids friction while still encouraging responsible data behavior.
- Informed Decision-Making: Departments can see how much of their budget is tied up in storage and make trade-offs. For example: Archive old data, tier to cheaper storage, dlete unnecessary copies see ROT data).
- Supports Cost Optimization & Forecasting: Showback highlights patterns of growth and waste, helping IT teams predict future capacity needs. It’s easier to make the right data storage investments or cloud migration strategies when you can show usage by business function. (See Capacity Planning)
- Enables Data Governance for AI & Analytics: As organizations prepare data for AI, showback helps identify where large, unused, or stale datasets are sitting. This ensures only the right data is kept hot and accessible, optimizing both costs and AI readiness.
Showback reporting shines a light on hidden storage consumption, empowers departments to take ownership, and helps IT organizations manage growth sustainably, with fewer political challenges that are common with the direct chargeback model.
How is Showback Reporting different than Chargeback?
Showback reporting tracks and displays storage usage and costs by department, project, or business unit but does not directly bill them. Its purpose is transparency and accountability. Chargeback, on the other hand, allocates and bills the actual costs back to the business units consuming storage, creating stricter budget enforcement but often with more resistance. Showback is easier to adopt since no money changes hands, while chargeback enforces cost control through direct financial impact.
Komprise makes both approaches more effective by providing detailed usage analytics across storage silos, delivering showback dashboards that highlight who owns what data and how much it costs, and automating the movement of cold or redundant data to lower-cost storage tiers. This visibility and actionability enable organizations to cut storage costs by 50–70% while ensuring the right data remains easily accessible and AI-ready.
Learn more about Komprise and Data Storage as a Service (STaaS).