The cloud is one of the most important technologies in the modern world. After all, the benefits that it can provide for your business are second to none. However, the costs surrounding the cloud can be complicated to understand. With so many considerations to make, knowing the true cost of the cloud for your business might seem impossible.
Understanding the total cost of ownership and its wider impact on your business will help you consider cost implications in the long run. In this, you can make a consideration on whether the cloud will outperform your on-premise solution, and if making the cloud is the right choice for your business.
In this article, we’re going to go over the ins and outs of the cost of ownership in the cloud, taking a deep dive into every aspect of cloud costs that you’ll need to know — from physical benefits to the hidden costs that you’ll come across.
Cost Savings and Benefits of Cloud Migration
Reduced Office Space Requirements
Cloud migration will massively reduce your office space requirements in a few aspects —
- Remote Working: The cloud fully enables remote and work-from-home setups, meaning that fewer people will need to come to work physically to be able to do work. With this, you’ll massively reduce the need for a large office space.
- Virtualisation: The virtualisation offered by the cloud means that you can reduce the physical hardware requirements in your office.
- Software as a Service (SaaS): SaaS applications are generally becoming more web-focused, meaning less need for massive storage requirements to be able to use applications.
With all of these, you can easily save costs on both physical office space and hardware requirements, with the added benefit of productivity as well.
Lower Cooling and Energy Costs
Cloud migration will allow you to save on costs all around, including energy costs and cooling costs. This is due to the fact that moving to the cloud reduces the amount of hardware required in your business — both when it comes to server hardware and office computers.
Because of this, you’ll be saving on energy and cooling, and all of the cooling associated with the cloud will be done by your provider.
Decreased Maintenance Expenses
Maintaining on-premises hardware is difficult and expensive. After all, having to configure, tweak, update, and troubleshoot physical hardware takes personnel and time — all of which can be very costly.
By moving to the cloud, your cloud provider will take care of all of the technical aspects, meaning that you don’t have to worry about maintenance. You just pay the cost to the provider, and they handle everything.
Opportunity for Innovation
Innovation breeds success, and the cloud is the home of innovation. The productivity and intelligence tools provided within the cloud fully unlock innovation in the best way possible, meaning that you can find success and innovate — helping your business prosper.
Simplifying Remote Work
Remote work is a key technology in the modern world, and the cloud will help simplify the cloud and ensure that you can take advantage of the power of remote working.
Things like cloud workspaces, cloud storage, virtualisation, and the ability to be able to communicate freely using the cloud will ensure that your business can take advantage of remote working to its fullest potential.
Hidden Costs of Cloud Migration
No Depreciation of Assets
Cloud providers provide their assets as a service rather than allowing you to own them. This means that depreciation isn’t possible, and needs to be accounted for when considering the long-term cost of the cloud.
Some cloud providers will allow you to bring your own assets so they can be depreciated, but this depends on your provider’s rules.
Data Transfer and Storage Costs
Cloud providers typically charge for data transfer, but some providers offer free inbound data transfer. Outbound data transfer is usually charged at a higher rate and will need to be considered in your cost calculations.
On top of this, cloud providers charge for storage based on the amount and type of data stored, which will also need to be considered when migrating — these costs can accrue if not considered and can be hefty.
The Need for Optimisation
Optimisation is vital when utilising the cloud, to ensure that you can optimise your cloud implementation and right size to balance cost and performance.
Failing to do this will result in a lot of extra costs, meaning that you’ll be spending far more than you need to. Because of this, optimisation is vital — and knowing that you need to focus on optimising can be a game changer for your business.
Comparing Cloud vs. On-Premises TCO
Ultimately, the cloud’s total cost of ownership is far more lucrative than the traditional on-premise infrastructure. After all, the cloud turns capital expenditure into operational costs, making costs less harsh and more manageable, and allowing you to spread costs much more easily within your business.
On top of this, the positives of the cloud massively outweigh the negatives if you’re aware of them — knowing how to go about cloud implementation correctly is one of the key parts of ensuring that you can take advantage of all of the benefits, and so informing yourself on the issues of cloud migration will make it all easier in the long run.
Making an Informed Decision
The cloud is a vital technology for businesses. After all, there are a host of performance and cost benefits — the latter of which can be seen when considering the total cost of ownership in the cloud. However, this is more difficult than just considering normal costs — there are other things you also need to consider including unseen and hidden costs.
If you’re looking to get started with the cloud, reach out to us today. We’re here to help and will ensure that you have everything you need to be able to understand and utilise a cloud implementation.
Get in touch with us now and see how we can help you.