The cloud technology is one of the most prominent technological inventions of our time. A report on the future of the cloud service market by Gartner shows the global cloud service market is set to reach US$ 266 billion by the end of 2020.
The shift to online services in the public and private sectors due to the COVID-19 lockdown is expected to boost this figure even more. It predicts that when the majority of enterprises shift to cloud services by 2022, the overall IT spending by enterprises for the services will reach around US$ 1.3 trillion. As of now, around 83% of the total enterprise workload is handled by cloud computing.
Seeing this promising growth, increasing numbers of enterprises are choosing to shift their applications and database to cloud servers. However, many of them are apprehensive about the cost of using such advanced technology. In case you are wondering if it will be worth paying to move and maintain your operations on cloud servers, you can take a quick look at the best cloud computing cost analysis method.
Best Cloud Computing Cost Analysis Method
Cloud technology is extremely complex and finding its estimated cost can seem as complex too. Apart from the different pricing plans by different cloud service providers, there are other small and large expenses you need to find out.
Follow these 3 steps for the best cloud computing cost analysis before making the decision to shift your applications from on-site servers to the cloud technology:
1 – Find the expense of using and maintaining your current IT system
Every business owner should be aware of the scale of their business. IT audit is the best way to do this. The audit will disclose the expenses of running your IT infrastructure currently and also give a clearer clue about the way your tech infrastructure will look in the cloud platform. The total expense of your current IT system should give a better idea of the cost of maintaining and using cloud services.
Some of the most important expenses your IT audit should tell you are the costs of:
- Hardware
- Server, database & technology maintenance
- Maintaining IT hardware (include staffing, facilities and real estate costs)
- Software
- Internet connectivity charges
- On-site servers
- Software licenses
- Maintenance contracts
- Supplies
- Warranty policies
- Spare parts
- Materials
- Administrative expenses
- Loss of productivity and revenue due to server downtime
Apart from finding out the monetary value of your existing IT infrastructure, you should also find out other important details with your audit, such as:
- Database capacity used
- Network bandwidth required
- Storage capabilities
- Number of servers being used
- Types of databases needed
All of the above-mentioned costs have significant value when performing cloud computing cost analysis.
2 – Figure out the estimated cost of cloud services
Once you are done with Step 1 you should have a good idea of the expenses and extent of using your current on-site IT infrastructure. The next step involves estimating the cost of operating and maintaining an IT infrastructure on the cloud.
As mentioned earlier, calculating the cost of cloud-based services can seem as complicated as the technology itself. However, to make this process easier, leading cloud service providers to offer a “Cost Calculator” – on an online expense estimation tool – which helps to get a precise figure of expense based solely on your usage and requirements.
Some of the most reliable and popular online Cost Calculator for cloud computing cost analysis are:
- Google Cloud Platform Cost Calculator
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator and Monthly Cost Calculator
- Rackspace’s Calculator
- Microsoft Azure’s Pricing Calculator
- IBM Bluemix’s Calculator
An online Cost Calculator for cloud computing cost analysis requires the user to enter several details to provide an accurate estimate of expenses. Now that you know the specific IT requirements of your business operations, you can easily add the required details in the Cost Calculator, such as:
- Type of server
- CPU cores
- Number of virtual machines
- GB of memory
- Type of storage
- Raw storage capacity
3 – Find out the expense of the cloud migration process
The cloud migration process itself is quite complex. Some, or all of your, business applications may have to be modified or replaced completely to make them suitable for running on the cloud servers. The migration process involves the total cost of moving your on-site data to the cloud, testing and integrating your migrated apps on the cloud platform and also the consultation fees of cloud migration service providers.
The expense of cloud computing also includes the cost of the monthly service subscription charges along with several direct and indirect costs.
Conclusion
Apart from making your business operations streamlined and more efficient, the decision to shift to cloud computing also benefits your budget in the long run too.
how to calculate cloud migration estimation