A method and structure for calculating transaction costs as a function of
one or more services provided by a computer system. Each user/computer
transaction utilizes one or more computer system services to execute the
transaction. Each computer system service provided by an IT department
incurs a cost in terms of the equipment, software, personnel and
facilities utilized to provide distinct levels of availability and
response time. By identifying one or more IT services utilized to execute
a transaction and by calculating the actual cost incurred to provide one
or more of the services, a transaction cost is calculated by summing up
the service costs. Thus, the transaction cost is a function of the
service costs of the one or more services utilized to execute the
transaction.