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Moving to the Cloud: Cost Savings

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Green_GaugeThis post is the second in a series addressing concerns organizations may have that prevent them from moving the cloud-based solutions.

Will moving to the cloud save money?

The answer is a definite, absolute … maybe!

Whether or not a move to the cloud saves money depends on the in-house services being replaced and the cloud-based services taking their place, as well as the impact the change will have on related IT services and your business.

In our experience, most companies see savings over 3-year and 5-year periods of 30% or more.  Some companies see total cost of ownership (TCO) savings of up to 70%

When looking at 5-year TCO, organizations must make honest projections on IT spending to maintain the status quo and/or upgrading systems.  Beyond projected hardware and software replacements and upgrades, the analysis should include the cost of services and supporting systems (backup, anti-virus, security, etc.).  The analysis should also assess soft costs for administration, support, and estimated down time.

The challenge remains making the comparison equivalent.  For example, moving from a single in-house Exchange server to Google Apps for Business is a move from a system with several single points of failure to a highly redundant and highly available service.  If improving availability is an objective of the move to the cloud, the comparison should include the cost of upgrading the Exchange environment for redundancy.

A final consideration should include any business enablement that comes from the move into the cloud.  Will the cloud service enable the business to operate more efficiently and/or in new, more productive ways?  Improved collaboration, real-time communications, and access to information are all examples of how Google Apps for Business enables businesses over traditional email services.

In straight dollars and cents, not every company will see savings when moving to cloud-based solutions.  With better availability and expanded capabilities, cloud computing solutions can deliver better value, even when the price tag is higher.

Next Post in the Series:  Provider Reliability

Previous Post in the Series:  Moving to the Cloud: Security

 

How Do You Know if You Are Cloud Ready?

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We understand the Google Apps may not be the best fit for all companies, but the solution is certainly worthy of serious consideration.   For most businesses, however, the question is really “Are YOU Cloud Ready?”

Being Cloud Ready is more than a willingness or desire to move IT infrastructure services, such as email, into cloud-based services.  You need to assess how the cloud solution will work for you.  Beyond the basics of email, calendar, and contacts, this means you should understand the following …

  • Does the cloud solution fit with your business processes and usage patterns?  Or, will users need to change how they use these applications?
  • Can you estimate how many users should see productivity gains by moving to the cloud solution?
  • Can you calculate and compare accurate Total Cost of Ownership estimates for your current systems and your cloud solutions?
  • Do you understand how many of your users rely on basic features versus your power users?
  • Do you have usage patterns that add could complexity to your migration if not identified in the planning phase?

Fortunately, answering these and other questions is getting easier as new tools come to market.

We have partnered with Exoprise to offer CloudReady RAPID and CloudReady PRO assessment services for MS Exchange environments.  With a non-intrusive analysis tool and expert analysis, we can provide you with the data and information you need to understand if you are ready to move from MS Exchange to Google Apps.

If you want to know more, please email me directly.