OK, maybe it's his IT department that's arithmetically challenged. :) If costs are CLOSE to being that high, then data volumes are a very poor metric for cost

OK, maybe it's his IT department that's arithmetically challenged. :) If costs are CLOSE to being that high, then data volumes are a very poor metric for cost allocation. 2+ people per terabyte are being counted in, so either there are a huge number of tables, or they're including BI developers, or something. E.g., doubling the size of every table, if nothing else changed, might only take those costs up 10%, give or take a factor of 2.