How do Cloud Computing costs add up? Is it more complex to implement a Cloud solutions rather than 'Traditional' ones?

I was recently asked these two questions by a potential customer and thought I'd share some thoughts with you all as this is rather large topic.

How do Cloud Computing costs add up?

The biggest cost driver of moving to the Public (Multi Tenanted) Cloud is the avoidance of Capex investment day one or indeed in the longer-term when you need to refresh and upgrade. You only pay for what you consume and you have no tie ins, so when you finish with something you simply switch it off and stop paying. The TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of an application or server or storage is very compelling indeed in the cloud - it's like consuming IT as a utility - flick the switch on and off as your business needs it. It stretches your budgets further and enables IT to deliver much more for less - you can focus your team on important projects which deliver competitive advantage to your organisation rather than managing standard business applications / systems which don't differentiate you from your competition.

Is it more complex to implement a Cloud solutions rather than 'traditional' ones?

To answer the second point, the implementation of Cloud technology is now well established and proven. The key points here are to use a specialist third party to help you and guide you in the implementation (it will save you a great deal of time and give you confidence and support) plus take advantage of the 'API' (Application Programming Interface) driven architecture - what I mean by this is the inter-operability and ease of migration which this gives you. Most Cloud offerings come with an API, which enables tools and functionality to move your data in and out with ease and link / integrate them together. In many cases moving to a Cloud offering is much easier than upgrading your applications / infrastructure in your traditional infrastructure. Here is an overview of some API technology Wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_APIs

If you have specific requirements or just want to talk about the Cloud, give me a shout and I'd be happy to talk it through. It's a big topic! And after hearing this, I'm happy to say we welcomed yet another forward thinking customer into The Cloud.

Tom Ray
Head of Operations
Cloudreach
Email: tom.ray@cloudreach.co.uk
Twitter: @cloudreach