More Cloud Means More Business Value

This week I'm looking at five reasons why moving to a cloud solution can reduce your costs.

More cloud means more business value according to a new survey from IDG Research and Accenture.

Low Upfront Investment

Most of us are very cash conscious at the moment. There is no doubt that if you are engaged in a large-scale infrastructure project, then the cloud will certainly be cheaper upfront. When looking at a total cost of ownership model, you also need to factor in:

• The cost of providing extra equipment and bandwidth to give equivalent resilience - most platform providers have more of this than you can afford whether that be power, servers, network, or storage.
• Outages cost far more money than most of us consider when purchasing on-premise solutions.
• The cost of upgrading as your needs change and technology develops over time – usually just part of the service from a cloud provider

Power Down Your Data Centre

Cloud models are much more efficient and reduce your electricity bills, office requirements and footprint. Not only does the cloud provider cover the power costs for your applications, but they also probably have access to greener technology. You save money on energy bills, headcount requirements and rent and also reduce your environmental impact.

Flexibility

Cloud solutions are usually more flexible than their on-premise equivalent.

Moving premises is expensive, not just for physically moving an in premise system but also for the cost of the expertise to make your move successful.
Network Bandwidth costs will be lower when your homeworkers connect to a cloud solution. Most cloud platforms are optimised for remote access, and users will be able work happily on domestic broadband, and you won't need expensive leased lines to link to apps running in the office.

Most cloud platforms give a range of pricing options depending on how you buy and over what time period. If you can predict usage, discounted cloud instances or tiered cloud storage models could save you a fortune, particularly if you have access to multi-cloud options like AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Reduced People Costs

Many companies are looking to reduce costs on people at present. An internal IT team (or outsourced contract for that matter) will be expensive if it focuses on the day to day maintenance of on-premise systems. In contrast, Cloud platforms do not require you to employ people to look after them, saving you money.

Scalability: Only Use What You Need

Cloud solutions provide the resources you need right now and allow you to scale up and down quickly and easily. This means you don’t have to worry about over providing for future growth , and can downsize if the future turns out to be less bright than predicted.