Almost every expense you can think of in a budget-conscious period after the financial crisis should be a hidden factor in the cost prediction model. But hidden spending is always unwelcome surprises, and at the moment it becomes more of a thing that people are not willing to accept.
Cloud computing services providers need to be more explicit about the cost of cloud computing. Of course, for CIOs and other IT professionals, it should be clear that each user spends $100 a year on the budget.
All the costs associated with people, processes, and architectures are also important considerations when it comes to transforming large-scale technologies and taking over management of a new system. So the secret is in the area of cloud computing that everyone is unfamiliar with, and how much of this cost adds up.
To help uncover the hidden costs of cloud computing, answer the following four key questions:
1. What are the feasible routes for migrating old-style applications to (or replacing) cloud computing?
2. What architecture changes are needed to integrate cloud computing and non-cloud applications?
3. How can we change our technology and operational processes to take advantage of different sourcing, configuration and management patterns?
4. Does a dedicated cloud computing (cloud computing used exclusively for a single enterprise) provide more flexibility than the current hosted or public cloud computing model? What is the cost of this?
The answers to these questions will change the idea of using cloud based applications to manage complex systems. This will help to uncover the real costs of such a shift.
When the focus of the conversation shifts to the system, it produces other questions that make this situation clearer:
1. How do we ensure that all customers in Salesforce.com are synchronized with our customer management applications, our billing applications, and our 6 product systems?
2. Should we add client application logic to Salesforce.com to validate customer and company information against our master list? Or should we do it externally and integrate the resulting systems and processes?
3. For IT personnel who support our customer systems, should we consider what types of skills they have or consider other institutions?
Many organizations in various industries are studying factors other than the cost of using cloud computing to understand the full cost of migrating, implementing, integrating, training, and redesigning the people and technology support people, processes, and architectures around them.
In fact, the three examples of companies we are working with show how different details lead to the same conclusion: the uncertainty of cloud computing's hidden costs:
A managed IT service vendor is interested in moving some of its help desk applications into cloud computing for its customers. But the company is not in a hurry to do this before it is monitored through the market.
An industrial product company is evaluating new technologies and methodologies. But the company will also take careful steps to see what the results of the assessment are.
A small and fast-moving financial services firm has so far not been convinced that any cloud computing service provider can provide them with the processing power required by service-level agreements and security requirements. This processing power is necessary for the return on investment.
In these three examples, the potential hidden costs of cloud computing are hampered by the decision making process.
As a result, when cloud service providers are gushing about their services, CIOs and their IT departments need to get out of the way and clearly understand the entire cost bottom line.
Remember: If you don't have protection, you can easily get burned on a cloudy day.