2. Alternatively, TCO analysis may be designed to cover an arbitrarily specified number of years, for example, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, and so on. This approach is usual in these situations:
TCO analysis is performed to choose a vendor from competing proposals, or to prioritize competing capital acquisition proposals.
The actual economic life, or service life of the acquisition is uncertain.
The organization's asset life cycle management polices and practices dictate specific life spans for classes of assets.