One often-touted premise of the cloud is the sheer savings stemming from a move to the cloud. While there it is undoubtedly true that a switch from capital expenditure (CAPEX) to operational expenditure (OPEX) model can often result in some form of savings, the long-term cost of running in the cloud is very much dependent on the types of workload as well as their performance characteristics.
Indeed, some enterprises with specific performance profiles have found on-premises deployments to be the most cost-effective option for their needs. For instance, Adobe had brought the Demand Side Platform (DSP) component of its Advertising Cloud back into its own data centres after citing unresolved cost and performance considerations⁴ . Elsewhere, financial information that was made available recently had pegged Dropbox’s move from the cloud to colocation facilities to a staggering savings of US$75⁵
million.
Of course, what works for one organisation may not work for another. Regardless, it is crucial that enterprises begin with the understanding that the cloud isn’t necessarily cheaper, and the onus that is for them to do their own sums to find the most cost-effective option. This could be a pure or multi-cloud approach or entail the use of a mixed hybrid cloud deployment that blends on-premises locations with the cloud.
¹ Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud Revenue to Grow 21.4 Percent in 2018, April 12, 2018
² Multi-Cloud Strategies Are A Growing Priority For Tech Companies, June 7 2018
³ Dealing with the cloud computing skills gap, July 24 2018
⁴ OpenStack Sydney: Drawing down the cloud, November 14 2017
⁵ Dropbox Saved $75 Million Moving from Public Cloud to Colocation Data Centers, March 6 2018
Contact us to learn more about Singtel’s data centres and our services.