Hybrid Cloud For Dummies

Balancing Costs and Benefits

How you plan your hybrid cloud environment will be driven by economics. You, therefore, need to think in terms of the total costs and whether those expenditures will be worthwhile in the long run. Achieving this balance isn’t simple. Many cloud services, including IaaS and SaaS, are offered based on a per-user, per-month, or per-year contract. Some other services are designed for occasional use. Private cloud services can often leverage hardware already existing within a data center. No simple formula will give you the most optimal way to define the total cost of ownership or whether a cloud service will accomplish your long-term goals.

Defining the purpose of your cloud services

Because of the economic impact, you have to look at cost-benefit issues though a different lens than in a traditional data center environment. You need to think about the purpose of each service you are considering and how it will affect the business. For example, a SaaS environment may be more expensive in yearly license fees, but save the company money in terms of hardware, software, maintenance, and support requirements. SaaS also may better support the internal needs of the business. Perhaps the SaaS environment means that your company can be more proactive in addressing customer or employee needs. This SaaS service could result in better internal productivity.

On the other hand, in other situations, a public cloud service won’t make economic sense, such as when your company’s ...