How to Determine the True Costs of Clouds

Think moving to the cloud will save you money? Maybe it’s time to think again. Unfortunately, the early excitement that accompanies cloud strategies often turns into disappointment for many enterprises, and sticker shock is a big reason why. Despite performing the due diligence of estimating upfront costs based on published pricing from service providers, many companies are hit by unexpected and unnecessary expenses once they make a cloud move. “Three or four years ago, our research showed that the number one driver for going to public cloud was the perception that it would help rein in costs,” says Brian Garrett, vice president of validation services for the IT consulting firm...
Think moving to the cloud will save you money? Maybe it’s time to think again. Unfortunately, the early excitement that accompanies cloud strategies often turns into disappointment for many enterprises, and sticker shock is a big reason why. Despite performing the due diligence of estimating upfront costs based on published pricing from service providers, many companies are hit by unexpected and unnecessary expenses once they make a cloud move. “Three or four years ago, our research showed that the number one driver for going to public cloud was the perception that it would help rein in costs,” says Brian Garrett, vice president of validation services for the IT consulting firm Enterprise Strategy Group. “Cost reduction is dropping as a driver now that people are getting more experience with the true costs of public cloud.” In fact, a study by IDG found that 38% of enterprises have moved workloads from the public cloud back to their onpremise data centers—with costs being among the biggest concerns. Part of the challenge is understanding all the variables that affect cloud pricing, which make it difficult to perform apples-to-apples comparisons to find the right deals. Cloud veterans also warn that to closely manage cloud costs, enterprises need significant upfront preparation not only for accurate cost comparisons but to determine which workloads will deliver price and performance benefits in the cloud versus keeping them on premise. All this should be done within a larger data center optimization and consolidation effort that’s informed by having clear visibility into the entire enterprise infrastructure. “As part of an ongoing IT simplification, modernization and rationalization program, enterprises must determine the best way to run each application,” says Paul Lewis, chief technology officer at Hitachi Vantara, a technology and professional services company. “That could mean either running it in the existing environment or recreating it in a different environment, whether that’s a private cloud, a SaaS application, within a new architecture deployed in the public cloud, or managed by a third party.” It’s clear that enterprises need a framework for sorting through the complexities of cloud pricing models, which make it difficult to perform accurate comparisons of initial costs and to forecast spending over time. Fortunately, best practices and new tools for analyzing and monitoring IT cloud costs over time are helping IT and financial planners evaluate cloud and on-premise options to find the right balance of cost and performance. of enterprises have moved workloads from the public cloud back to their on-premise data centers—with costs being among the biggest concerns. 38% “ PAUL LEWI S As part of an ongoing IT simplification, modernization and rationalization program, enterprises must determine the best way to run each application. That could mean running it in the existing environment…a private cloud, a SaaS application, in the public cloud or managed by a third party.” COPYRIGHT © 2017 FORBES AVOID STICKER SHOCK | 4 STEP 1 Sort Out Cost Complexities COPYRIGHT © 2017 FORBES
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