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3 Excuses for Not Moving to the Cloud

By Rob Waggoner

As with many things, change is hard. Even though companies continue to move to the cloud, it is easy to give excuses as to why you shouldn't move. Below are 3 common excuses. Have you been using any them?

We can't move to the cloud because...

1. It’s not what we are used to! 

Change is a challenge sometimes, but the cloud gives you the ability to use resources when you need them and turn them off when you don’t.  It may sound simple, and most of the time it is.  Sometimes it can be more of a challenge to truly save costs by moving to the cloud, but we have seen numerous customers move to the cloud to save money and increase their agility. I talk about cost savings below, but let me talk about agility for a moment. How often have you wanted to take advantage of new technologies just to be delayed due to the cost of acquisition of the new technology? The cloud instantly lowers the cost of acquisition because cloud resources are based on a consumption model. Only pay for what you use, when you use it. The cloud makes proof of concepts easy and then makes deployment to full production even easier because you do not have to wait to acquire new hardware or additional software. You just enable the resources you need when you need them. 

 

2. I like seeing, and even hugging my servers! I can’t do that when they are in the cloud. 

You are correct, you can't see and touch your servers when they are in the cloud. If you really want to have your servers “under your roof” then keep them.  The truth is that some people want their servers to be kept locally; but when you start thinking of the cost of the floor space they consume, the electrical cost the cost to cool them, the service contracts, and even the manpower to maintain them, it does add up. When you pay for cloud services, your costs include the real estate, electricity, cooling costs and even the manpower to maintain them, but you pay less for those cloud resources because of the scale of the cloud.  Microsoft has one of the largest cloud platforms on the planet, with a zero-carbon footprint for most of their Azure Regions, and a goal of a zero-carbon footprint for all their Regions. Microsoft’s Regions are typically located in rural areas. They bring in a massive amount of bandwidth to ensure you always have connectivity to their cloud.  

 

3. The cloud is too expensive! 

That is a common excuse, but one that can easily be debunked. When you think about the capitol costs of your on-premises hardware, then the recurring costs of services contracts, electricity, air conditioning and even the cost of the employees to take care of your servers, it starts to add up. As I mentioned before, the cloud is a resource that can be used 24x7 or on-demand. Does your business run 24x7?  Even if it does, are all resources needed 24x7 and even weekends?  If you think about your on-premises hardware, you are paying for all its costs 24x7, even when you aren’t using them.  With the cloud, when you turn off unneeded resources, you stop paying for them. Our integrated scheduler and auto-scaling help to drive down the cost of your IT infrastructure in the cloud. 

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Tags: Move to the Cloud

azure cost optimization

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