Public cloud computing vendors can push costs offers a high degree of standardization and the ability to provide a common pool of processing resources with many systems and customers to share. However, companies must also be considered when managing the hidden costs of cloud service integration with legacy information systems equipment and staff to these services.
After Errol Rasit, principal analyst at Gartner, customers need the capacity, the cost of providing local service, to measure how to make an informed decision on public cloud services is available. This measure, however, can not be readily available to any business, however, added Rasit.
For example, the cost of an e-mail service based on the cloud that could cost U.S. $ 30 per user per month comparison, the company must be able to identify customers, the acquisition cost of hardware necessary, equipment costs, software licenses, implementation and support over the term of service. The information is to know the company before you decide what would be the result of rising costs, the analyst Gartner important.
In addition, the cost is not the only driver to move or inhibitor for companies, public cloud. Rasit said: “The quality, reliability, integration, security, certification and flexibility of the service are the other focal points of comparison.”
Arun Chandrasekaran, research director of ICT practice at Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific, also pointed out that cloud services are, by nature, touted as “intuitive and easy to use.” This is particularly true for infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) products, while software-as-a-Service (SaaS), significant training time and integration can take place on infrastructure, at he said in his e-mail.
“While public cloud services to make real savings, organizations do a thorough assessment of clearly need to understand the explicit and hidden costs,” said Chandrasekaran. “Costs must be clearly understood, includes the integration, the depreciation cost of existing infrastructure, the costs of bandwidth and the risk premium. ”
Rasit agreed, citing a recent study by Gartner on the adoption of SaaS has been the No. 1 complaint after the adoption of service indicated in the integration process. During the rest of the responsibility of more service providers, IT departments need to manage issues such as ensuring the availability of the service within the organization, he added.
He went further emphasized that the elected public cloud services for their low cost, it would be necessary to closely monitor and manage these services to prevent “Jevons Paradox.” He explained that Jevons paradox refers to the increase in efficiency is increased by the use of a resource, which in turn leads to the consumption of the resource.
, Rasit “Therefore, more effective or less expensive service, the more potential for waste or under-utilization” is included.
Even lower TCO
A company of ZDNet Asia spoke noted that while adding the hidden cost of the price displayed on public cloud services total cost of ownership (TCO) for businesses is even lower than the construction and management of their own applications on internal control IT infrastructure.
Brian Kissel, vice president of corporate IT, Juniper Networks, said the company believes that the services of public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google will be available “very competitive.” They are also “aggressively” SaaS, IaaS and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings for a number of functions within the organization, he added.
When asked what were the hidden costs of Juniper Networks, Kissel said new applications received on the complexity of the use of public cloud services.
For example, the company currently uses for its customer relationship management, Siebel (CRM) is in the midst of adding new features with products from Salesforce.com. This means their IT department needs to master both the applications and provide connectivity between the two CRM systems for other applications and infrastructure components, he revealed.
“When we finally complete the migration as a result of Salesforce.com, and then double the cost disappears. But in the transition, we [must] bear an extra burden, “says Kissel.
Rasit reiterated that any new service would be used to confirm and operational capabilities that may not require the company to date. Thus, the cost of education employees in the new service in some cases can be reduced but can never be completely removed, he noted.