Why CFOs and Cloud Computing Have a Love-Hate Relationship
As I’ve noted a number of times, cloud computing promises both greater IT agility and reduced costs. No one disputes the agility issue. Compared to traditional resource deployment that can drag on for weeks or months, cloud computing offers the enormous improvement of a timetable measured in minutes.
On the subject of cost, however, there is no consensus. I discussed the subject a couple of weeks ago here. The other perspective made itself known last week with this opinion piece in InformationWeek. The author evaluated the historical price changes in AWS S3 storage vs. on-premises, disk-based storage and concluded that AWS isn’t cost competitive. Moreover, he asserted that AWS storage isn’t realizing (or at least, isn’t passing on) the benefits of Moore’s Law, since its prices aren’t dropping as rapidly as on-premises storage pricing…