The adoption of cloud technology till date has mostly been to create and configure applications only in a Cloud data center. Along with applications, their matching developing elements also need to be created and configured completely in the cloud.
As cloud services and technologies get advanced, IT enterprises will also be more experienced. This will develop a need to movie existing conventional application systems to private and public cloud servers. Sweet migration of infrastructure to the Cloud should be a top priority from IT organizations. However, one of the most prominent factors that help finalize the decision to migrate company infrastructure to the cloud is the average cost of cloud migration.
The main question for business owners and entrepreneurs regarding migration cost is choosing the more cost-efficient option between migrating existing infrastructure and applications or build a new set of applications from scratch in the cloud.
How to Calculate the Average Cost of Cloud Migration?
Estimating the exact cost of moving your IT infrastructure from servers to a cloud environment is a complicated process. But if the cost is one of the deciding factors for you, then you can use the tips given below and calculate the average cost of cloud migration.
1 – Audit cost of existing IT Infrastructure
Accurate knowledge of your existing infrastructure is important and an audit is the best way to get it. The audit will show the current cost you are paying to run your IT infrastructure and give a good preview of how your infrastructure would look on the cloud server. This information will help you to get a better clue of the cost of cloud resources your infrastructure is likely to consume.
Keep an impartial attitude and figure out the complete cost of using and maintenance of on-site IT assets for a year. This should also include the cost of other resources and not just the cost of the infrastructure. There are two different types of cost to consider when adding the total cost for IT resources:
- Direct costs – Direct costs are easy to calculate as they reflect on your balance sheet. These include the cost of hardware and software, including the amount paid for physical servers, maintenance contracts, software licenses, warranties, materials, supplies, spare parts, etc. Seek the help of your accounts department with past invoices, payment records and purchase orders. While you’re at it, you can also find out the cost of storage, database and bandwidth that is consumed over a year with your servers and broadband. There are several operational costs to be considered too, such as technician charges for maintaining your server, database and other technologies. The cost of internet connectivity along with the cost of real-estate, staff and other facilities that house your IT infrastructure is another direct cost in operations.
- Indirect costs – Indirect costs are more difficult to identify and calculate but are equally important to consider before migration to cloud technology. A major indirect cost is the loss of productivity of employees and customers when your on-site server experiences downtime. You can review log files and deduce the frequency of failure of your servers and the average duration of downtimes too. Multiplying the total time by an average hourly rate you can estimate the average loss in revenue as well.
2 – Get an estimate of cloud infrastructure costs
Once you have figured out the cost of your existing IT infrastructure you will need to calculate the average cost of using and maintaining your applications in the cloud environment. Leading IaaS providers, such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc provide a handy cost calculator for their services and products on their individual official websites. There are several reliable third-party cost calculators also which give an accurate calculation of the cost to use cloud services and technologies based on your specific requirements.
3 – Calculate the cost of cloud migration
Lastly, you need to get an estimate of the cost of executing the cloud migration process. The volume of data and the number of servers, along with integration and app testing, as well as the consultation fees will mainly determine the cost of the migration process.
What is the Average Cost of Cloud Migration?
Generally, the migration of conventional server-based applications database to cloud servers is more of a services-driven activity. Customers need to hire well-trained engineers who can skillfully convert, transport and reconfigure data at every step through the complex migration process. This is a major factor that increases the cost of migration to clouds in a conventional way. On an average, the manual effort and hours required to perform the migration process successfully are charged as low as US$ 1,000 per server to as much as US$ 3,000 per server and can even go up to US$ 15,000 for complicated cases.
Cloud servers offer impressive scalability and there is potential to migrate an immense number of servers to the cloud environment right now. The only solution for cost-efficient cloud migration is with automated cloud migration services from leading IT service providers.