One of the most stressful decisions you might ever have to
make is whether you will go for cloud services, or you will just stick with
your onsite IT infrastructure. There are a lot of things you have to take into
consideration. From ramp up time to migration costs, all of these have to be
studied, which makes the whole move requiring both money and time on your part.
However, instead of dwelling on this initial concern, it is
a must to project your long term ROI or return on investment that you can
expect to get. This return on investment is not always something strictly
monetary. This could also come in the form of improved customer service,
greater efficiency on new staff and client onboarding, and more available space
in the office.
To completely understand if your business can benefit from
cloud services or from the traditional onsite data center, there are four
fundamental factors you have to consider:
Capital Investment
It is no secret that when you invest in an onsite data
center, you will have to spend a substantial upfront investment for securing
the space, the technology, as well as the people who will create and overlook
it. Simply put, you will have to do a bit of math to identify the overall price
of ownership of the onsite option as compared to an infrastructure platform
based on the cloud.
As stated earlier, onsite options usually call for extra
hands-on technical support which comes at some additional costs. Meanwhile,
cloud services outsource this possibility then distribute the price of
maintenance to the whole subscriber base which makes it a more affordable
option for all.
Scalability
When you like to double your current capacity overnight, it
can be difficult to do it with your physical data center. Most of the time,
additional software and hardware are needed to make it possible. On the other
hand, cloud services give you the chance to scale down or up anytime you feel
like doing so. Through this, you will be paying exactly for what are using.
Ease of Use
An on-premise data center needs a substantial amount of
specific support for its management. In the event that this support is not
available 24/7, which can be quite expensive, you might find yourself in an
uncomfortable position where you have to say your apologies to your clients for
the prolonged and unexpected downtime.
With cloud services, it is standard to have support 24/7.
For a low fee every month, you will have the peace of mind knowing you will
have an industry-leading support, speed, and uptime.
Flexibility
When you are managing risky and complex software updates, it
is essential to have test environments. It is a must that you know how a
certain update will affect the user base prior to rolling this out to everyone.
The use of cloud services instead of the usual onsite
solution can give you a chance to quickly establish your virtual testing
environment with no need to experience the hassle of preparing a physical
workstation.
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