CLOUD – Technology that Can Lower Company Electricty Costs
Obsah
Thanks to switching from physical infrastructure to cloud, companies can significantly save investment and operational costs, namely for electricity, employees or repairs.
In today’s world of increase in probabyl all apsects of company costs – elextricity, gas, diesel, wages – the majority of predominantly small and mid-sized companies looks for a way to decrease them or to be more precise, optimize them.
In this article, we will think about the optimization of costs for IT infrastructure. To do that, we have to divide companies into 3 groups:
- Companies that have their physical IT infrastructure outsourced in a third-party data center
- Companies that utilize virtual IT infrastructure
- Companies that have their infrastructure in-house – servers are stored in a server room or any similar space
In specific cases, a company can use a mix of physical and virtual infrastructures. When we talk about the forst two cases, these types of companies should evaluate the pricing policy of their service provider. It is also important to focus on the level and scope of technical support – is it available 24/7, can it really resolve the emerging problems and are there any additional costs that arise during problem solution.
In case of own infrastructure, it is appropriate to ask about the reason why the infrastructure is owned. For some it is the sense of security, for others distrust towards external service providers or just simply because it has been done that way. But isn’t the current situation we feel every day a time for a change?
First, we need to realite that owned IT infrastructure is connected to a variety of usually overooked costs:
- One-time CAPEX investment costs to procure IT infrastructure
- Regular operational and maintenance costs to operate the IT infrastructure – electricity, maintenance and upgrades
- Increased wages devoted to a team that has to manage the owned infrastructure
- One-time payments to adjust the architecture based on current needs
- Costs related to service shutdown (planned or not)
- Additional investment costs when the architecture needs to be significantly expanded
It is also necessary to take into consideration that the life span of physical IT infrastructure is 3 – 5 years on average. On the other side, cloud technologies can remove or decrease all of the abovementioned investment and operational costs. There are several reasons for this claim. Let’s look at them more in depth.
Full Use of the IT Infrastructure
It is a long-term best practice – still confirmed by international research – that the use of owned cloud infrastructure is used on average from 25 – 35%. Recalculated, 65 – 75% of both investment and operational costs are paid in vain. When it comes to cloud services from external data center, this horrible money drain is eliminated because majority of providers provide you with the Pay-as-You-Go model. The customer only pays for the computing resources that are really used.
Decreased Electricity Consumption and Other Costs
One of the biggest cost articles related to operation own infrastructure is the cost for electricity consumption. The current situation has made them grow even more and they do require more attention. Just to underline this statement with some numtbers, an annual cost for electricity consumption of a simple 2-years-old physical server is CZK 94,000 – and this is just for the eletrical power and cooling.
With owned physical infrastructure, you have to take into account additional operational costs for maintenance, repairs, service shutdowns and its consequences. Additional area is also the impossibility to predict these costs – contrary to cloud which enables you to specificaly define and predict all costs.
Optimized Costs for IT Personnel
Thanks to IT infrastructure outsourcing, you can at least save time of your IT specialists who had to focus on running your IT infrastructure. It does not mean that you will no longer need their services but you will not need as many of them or they can focus on much more important tasks like innovation, optimization or projects, not routine activities that are redundant. Plus, external cloud provider should have a support team that is available 24/7.
Full Elimination of CAPEX Costs
Thanks to cloud, there is no need to provide any investments because the whole IT infrastructure is provided in the form of a service. This leads to saving large investment costs that can be utilized much better over a period of time – for example to develop the company in other areas. Majority of cloud providers constantly innovates and implementes the most modern technologies so there is no place for the fear of not having the best of the best.
High Cloud Service Security
A high risk that can be a real problem when it comes to owned physical IT infrastructure is any outage, shutdown or other problem with the physical servers. This can have unforseen consequences to the business and could potentially mean high losses. And that is excluding any cyberattacks.
This risk is significantly reduces when the company selects a cloud service running from a data center. This usually offers a high level of protection againts the internal (hardware malfunctions, Internet connection problems) and external influences (electricity outages, weather problems, cyber hardware attacks).
If your company decides to utilize cloud services, it is a best practice to contact several providers and let them provide you with a full IT infrastructure analysis, suggest several ways how to switch infrastructures and describe in detail the pros and cons of each – including the business model and all fees. It is important for a provider to give you individual approach and not a universal solution – only then can you ensure for your company the best services that will take into account your needs with regards even for your future development.
