# Running a €500k infrastructure budget

Leadership galaxy · Cédric Merlin, CTO · https://merlin-cedric.fr/en/direction/budget/

Servers, workstations and telephony: a single budget of about €500k a year, arbitrated and tracked end to end.

## The problem

Servers, workstations and telephony are expensive, and every line has its own vendor, its own pace and its own emergencies.

## The constraint

Hold a single budget without sacrificing the reliability of the service.

## What I did

1. **Everything on one page.** I put servers, workstations and telephony into one budget, to see where every euro goes.
2. **Trade-offs.** I weigh what an expense brings against what it costs, and I decide what stays, what changes and what stops.
3. **Regular tracking.** I follow spending all year, to correct early rather than discover a gap at year end.

## The result

About €500k a year managed, across three spending lines, in a single budget.

Figure: €500k of infrastructure managed every year.

## Stack

Servers, Workstations, Telephony, Budget tracking

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Page: https://merlin-cedric.fr/en/direction/budget/ · Contact: contact@merlin-cedric.fr