The Cost of a Cloud Migration
Many businesses are evaluating the advantages of moving on-premises IT infrastructure to cloud computing, from startups to seasoned corporations and small to large-scale organizations. Many of our clients have discovered that making this change has a variety of advantages, including increased flexibility, scalability, and cost savings. It’s critical to understand both the possible costs and the cost savings involved with shifting to the cloud environment before taking the plunge.
Understanding Current IT Infrastructure costs
In order to do a cost-benefit analysis for cloud migration, your company must first have a comprehensive understanding of its existing IT costs. A detailed analysis of your existing expenses can assist you in two ways: First, you’ll get a clear picture of how much you spend, and second, you’ll start to understand how your operations might appear in the cloud, including how much cloud resources your operations would demand.
There are two areas you need to consider:
Direct Costs of Premise Systems Vs Public Cloud
The gear and software that you have for your on-premises IT infrastructure are the most visible immediate expenditures. Getting a complete image of how many servers you have and how much capacity you presently utilize will not only help you generate a clear picture of your direct expenses, but it will also serve a second function. Examining your existing operations will show any inefficiencies or indicate whether you are operating at or near capacity. This knowledge will be very useful when you explore your alternatives moving ahead. However, in addition to hardware and software, you’ll need a lot of additional services that come under the area of direct expenditures. This includes any warranties, contracts, and software licenses that you have. It’s also critical to have your accounting staff give you with information on any parts and supplies purchases that are required for maintaining and guaranteeing the proper operation of your system. Labor — particularly your IT personnel — the buildings where you keep your servers, and the cost of internet access are all examples of direct costs.
Indirect Costs of Continued Integration
Indirect expenses are more difficult to measure since your employees may need to estimate the number of hours they spend on things like training or onboarding new members of your IT team. However, it’s critical to think about and price out all of the personnel resources that your IT operations require.
In addition to calculating how much your business and your clients lose for every minute your servers are down and you’ve lost connectivity, your indirect cost audit should include calculating how much your business and your clients lose for every minute your servers are down and you’ve lost connectivity. Your IT department should be able to tell you how many times this has happened in the previous year and how long each event lasted. Obviously, you’ll have to evaluate how much one of these occurrences will affect your reputation and the loyalty of your clientele.
Determining the Cost of Cloud Infrastructure
Reviewing your existing operations is essential because it not only offers you a clear image of what you use, how dependable it is, and how much it costs, but it also provides you with the data you need to estimate your prospective cloud infrastructure expenses. There are several cloud service providers, and many of them offer pricing calculators. The AWS Pricing Calculator is one such tool that may help you estimate your total cost of ownership (TCO). You’ll need to reply to the calculator’s prompts for the information you obtained while evaluating your existing direct and indirect expenses in order to estimate your prospective costs properly. If you don’t happen to have all of the information the calculator requests, you can select certain scenarios that it provides in order to get an idea of your costs. To estimate cloud infrastructure costs you can use this TCO Calculator from AWS.
Migration Costs from Data Center
During the migration process, you will pay a fee to move your data, but you’ll also still be running your regular operations even as the migration project is underway. In addition, as data is being migrated, you need to be sure that the data you have remaining on-prem and what you’ve already moved to the cloud environment remain in sync with one another. This is one of the biggest costs of the migration process because it involves a lot of labor to ensure that you maintain the integrity of your data.
Another important step is making sure that everything you have previously been running in your on-premises environment will actually run properly in the cloud. Integrating your systems with the cloud and then testing to ensure that everything keeps its original function after continued integration is crucial.
You might not be able to accomplish a migration project with just your own team. After all, it’s a significant project that will almost certainly necessitate your IT services team’s entire focus. This is one of the many reasons why choosing a company like Touchstone Security to assist you with your migration strategy is so important: it allows your in-house staff to focus on what they do best. However, having Touchstone Security oversee your project has other advantages. We’ve worked on migrations for a variety of companies of all sizes, scopes, and complexity, and we’re well-equipped to foresee and respond to any difficulties, resulting in a lot more efficient operation.
Post-migration costs
You’ll still have post-migration expenditures after your cloud migration project is over and you’re reaping the cost savings and other benefits of transferring your on-premises infrastructure to the cloud environment. Fees for cloud services from your cloud provider will be included in the direct expenses, and these are likely to fluctuate as your business expands. However, because your cloud services are scalable, you’ll only pay for what you use with auto-scaling. You’ll also have ongoing labor expenditures, whether it’s for your own IT team or for ongoing assistance from a cloud services management expert. Training, security, and compliance will also be ongoing costs to keep everything running smoothly. Integration and testing will continue throughout as well as you add or change functionality.
Migrating to the cloud can feel overwhelming. There are stability concerns, cost concerns, and most importantly security concerns. The Touchstone Security team can help alleviate those concerns and prepare your businesses to migrate to the cloud. We offer fully managed cloud migration services. If you’re interested in exploring the benefits of migrating to the cloud infrastructure with a team you can trust, schedule a complimentary call with one of our experts.
For many clients, a successful cloud migration reduces cost, improves scalability, and significantly reduces the risk of a cyber incident that could derail your business.
Touchstone’s proven method for cloud migration services brings your business to the cloud with little to no downtime. That means you get all of the benefits of the cloud without business interruption. Each cloud migration is organized by our team of world-class engineers with experience in the U.S. Air Force, NSA, and Large Enterprise environments. Our cloud migration services can increase efficiency, decrease cost, and improve reliability. Many organizations that have migrated to AWS see cost savings of 30% or more compared to on-premise solutions.
Cloud migrations are tough. You need a team you can count on to manage it every step of the way. Touchstone Security will work closely with your team to ensure that your migration goes smoothly and efficiently. For every project we take on we aim to create long-term relationships that last for years. For a free cloud migration assessment and quote please contact us at the link below.