Buy a Server or Move to the Cloud?

Grazed from DailyNews. Author: Patrick Tamburrino.

After a few rough years with the economy, and after squeezing every last drop of functionality out of their existing infrastructure, some companies are faced with the question of replacing that infrastructure with new equipment or moving their information to the cloud. While the option of putting data in the cloud is attractive especially to new companies that do not have established server infrastructure, the financial aspects surrounding a move to cloud computing for established companies may surprise you.

According to a recent article in Forbes, when established companies received proposals from leading cloud computing companies and peeled back the onion a bit, moving to cloud-based servers was far more expensive than simply investing in new server infrastructure…

In investigating the costs of moving to a cloud-based server, the “blended cost” of a server that can handle complex applications as well as file storage, and the related support, licensing and necessary infrastructure features can cost approximately $100 per month per user. If a company has 10 users, that cloud-based server cost is $12,000 per year. If you analyze your costs over a three-year period, that cost is $36,000…

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