We are not surprised to hear that the debate rages on amongst business owners on if cloud services and cloud computing saves business money.

One thing is true about the cost debate of cloud services, not all cloud services can be counted as equal. It is not a straight apples to apples comparison, it is mostly apples to oranges when it comes to the cloud. You also have to make sure you are not comparing apples to lemons.

No two businesses are alike when it comes to cloud services. Rarely can you find two businesses with the exact same cloud requirements and needs from their cloud technologies. There is no pattern when comparing small business across the country.

There are numerous factors such as management, optimizations and additional cloud services that make the cloud service water very murky.

Forrester, an independent IT research firm provided a solid list of elements involved in the cloud cost debate including the comparison of traditional IT investments versus cloud services.

The author of the Forrester blog also outlined some of the hidden costs of cloud services, including both SaaS and cloud platforms that your business can avoid and help your business lower the costs of cloud services in tangible ways.

His notes include:

Customization — The more you can use the entire cloud solution as it was designed, the lower the costs to your business. It is more cost effective to teach your employees to use the SaaS as it is designed than to try to bend it to your processes

Integration — You inevitably integrate cloud technologies with in-house applications, data storage and other cloud services. Best practice is to define clear integration strategy with as few hops or connections as possible.

Sprawl — A cloud solution you bought initially for your 15 employees sounds like a great investment and low-cost solution until your business hits 50 or 100 employees.

Storage grows, it never shrinks — Actively manage storage use by moving data to lower cost storage services when they are no longer in day-to-day use, moving or deleting old files or copies of files if you don’t need them. You would be surprised how much duplication is in your old data files.

Our team specializes in helping business leverage cloud solutions in an affordable way. Our team is well-positioned to help guide you in your cloud solutions decision. Give us a call today and book a no obligation discussion about your cloud needs.