Computer hardware comes with a price tag you can see, but increasingly, the rest of the IT budget does not. In the newest episode of The Savvy CIO, hosted by Bradd Busick, Mark Dunkerley, VP of Enterprise Technology Services and CISO at Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Sales & Services, said, “I don’t think anybody knows how to calculate AI costs.”
Dunkerley, who supports nearly 60 Coca-Cola bottlers across North America, traces a 20-year arc in how hidden spend shows up. It began with, “I need a server, I need storage.” It moved to the cloud, where shadow IT and consumption costs are hard to govern even with a mature cloud team. Now it has moved again, and this time, he argues, the industry does not yet have the math.
That uncertainty collides with a planning process built for a slower era. Dunkerley makes the case that the three-year roadmap still has a role for lifecycle and technical debt work, but that no leader can credibly forecast AI three- to six-months out, which makes transparency with non-technical executives, reserved project budget, and strong business relationships the real controls. “Hidden spend,” he said, “is as much a governance problem as a finance one.”
The episode also pushes back on the assumption that AI is a shortcut past foundational work. Dunkerley points to two constraints no model resolves on its own – unreliable data and unexamined processes.
Both leaders land on the same prescription – bring data and facts to the executive table, shift accountability for risk and spend from a single CIO or CISO to the broader business, and treat governance, risk, and compliance as the mechanism that makes it stick.
The Savvy CIO is produced by Park Place Technologies and explores the budget pressures, AI adoption challenges, and security concerns facing today’s IT leaders, along with the people solving them every day.
Episode 5, “Managing the Spend You Can’t See,” is available now on Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
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This entry was posted on September 16, 2026 at 8:35 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Park Place Technologies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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‘Savvy CIO’ Podcast Reveals the Hidden IT Costs Leaders Can’t Afford to Ignore
Computer hardware comes with a price tag you can see, but increasingly, the rest of the IT budget does not. In the newest episode of The Savvy CIO, hosted by Bradd Busick, Mark Dunkerley, VP of Enterprise Technology Services and CISO at Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Sales & Services, said, “I don’t think anybody knows how to calculate AI costs.”
Dunkerley, who supports nearly 60 Coca-Cola bottlers across North America, traces a 20-year arc in how hidden spend shows up. It began with, “I need a server, I need storage.” It moved to the cloud, where shadow IT and consumption costs are hard to govern even with a mature cloud team. Now it has moved again, and this time, he argues, the industry does not yet have the math.
That uncertainty collides with a planning process built for a slower era. Dunkerley makes the case that the three-year roadmap still has a role for lifecycle and technical debt work, but that no leader can credibly forecast AI three- to six-months out, which makes transparency with non-technical executives, reserved project budget, and strong business relationships the real controls. “Hidden spend,” he said, “is as much a governance problem as a finance one.”
The episode also pushes back on the assumption that AI is a shortcut past foundational work. Dunkerley points to two constraints no model resolves on its own – unreliable data and unexamined processes.
Both leaders land on the same prescription – bring data and facts to the executive table, shift accountability for risk and spend from a single CIO or CISO to the broader business, and treat governance, risk, and compliance as the mechanism that makes it stick.
The Savvy CIO is produced by Park Place Technologies and explores the budget pressures, AI adoption challenges, and security concerns facing today’s IT leaders, along with the people solving them every day.
Episode 5, “Managing the Spend You Can’t See,” is available now on Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
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This entry was posted on September 16, 2026 at 8:35 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Park Place Technologies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.