David Merrill's Blog: Jumping into Storage Economics:

Like it or not, we need, as systems/storage admins to be more aware of the monetary aspects of business as they relate to our parts of work, at least. For my whole career, I've been in organisations where money was an issue, where it can be a large struggle to get a new server, or upgrade the disk on an old one. I've found that the best way to justify these things to those who make the spending decisions is to speak their language about your topic. Talk about return on investment, the cost and expected returns of the various options, the likely costs of *not* taking the action you're suggesting.

Knowing the language of your target audience is vital - if you want buy in on your spending plans, then you need to talk the language of money.