CLOUD MIGRATION AND MANAGEMENT COSTS

PART I

CLOUD MIGRATION AND MANAGEMENT COSTS

Cloud migration is a tricky process. Determining the cost necessarily involves a strategic, holistic approach, so it’s critical to understand and account for all of the factors that go into migration, as well as to identify the factors that cause the cost to spiral out of control.

Cost of cloud migration

Cloud experts say that it is difficult to estimate the cost of cloud migration even with a cloud migration strategy. Businesses should first account not just for price differences between on-premises and cloud computing but also for a number of other factors, many of which are frequently overlooked. Some costs are convenient to predict. Data migration costs from on-premises storage to cloud-based storage, for example, is readily apparent. Other migration costs, such as those associated with workload refactoring, are more difficult to quantify. It’s also easy to overlook staffing expenses and the expenses to deploy new types of services.

Cost estimation methods

The gross cost of each component of cloud migration is calculated using two methods: the cloud cost and the human cost.

1. The human cost

The human cost of cloud migration is more difficult to quantify and can vary depending on the number of DevOps, CloudOps and other team members required. Again, resource requirements largely depends on the size and scope of the application.

2. Cloud costs

The cloud cost is the simpler one to calculate amoung the two. Cloud calculators can be used to easily total the infrastructure, license, data transfer, and storage costs for the applications, services, and data to be deployed in Cloud.

What does cloud migration cost contain?

Cloud migration cost is challenging to estimate. Let’s have a run-down of the costs we should take into account:

1. The cost of creating the cloud infrastructure

Based on the number of application components, their interconnections and storage requirements, necessary infrastructure (compute and storage), and network must be created and configured by a DevOps team or a single person. If the infrastructure is less complex, this may be a lower cost; however, larger infrastructures will necessitate more manpower and more cost.

2. The cost of the cloud provider

Each provider and application will charge a different fee, but this is usually easy to determine and one of the simplest costs to calculate. The cloud architect should decide on the type of provider to use, which can be influenced by factors such as the services required and their availability in the region, compliance needs, programming language required, database types, or other storage required.

3. The cost of Data Transfer

Although it may seem to be trivial, the amount of cloud storage required by any organization should be comparable to the amount of storage available on-premises, though this can vary. Data upload and download charges vary with cloud vendors and the storage types used. Large infrastructures may necessitate different pricing, but if you’re unsure, this is probably not relevant for your company.

Using SSD cloud storage versus HDD cloud storage may affect the cost of data transfer, as SSDs are more efficient but also more expensive to maintain.

4. Post-migration costs – maintenance and enhancements

The costs to consider after migration include, of course, the ongoing payments to the provider to use the cloud services, compute, and space. This is something that the provider can quote you on, so calculating the total cost of maintenance isn’t too difficult. The other costs include costs for manpower to monitor and maintain the infrastructure and applications (CloudOps or SREs) and any software tools that may be used for monitoring and management of these systems. 

The next sections of this article talk about what are the different ways cloud migration costs could go off the rails and the remedies for it.

Conclusion

It is very important to clearly understand the costs involved in cloud migration and management so that you can create a strategy that prevents your costs from going off the rail. 

This clearly indicates that you need an experienced partner who will facilitate you in avoiding the “tech” debt that is holding down your cloud migration and avoiding the unanticipated surprises and subsequent fact-finding exercises that frequently accompany cloud migration projects.

Cloud Control Solutions help enterprises in the analysis, assessments, implementation, and management of cloud migration and management using the best industry practices and still keeping the costs within the budgeted amounts. You can improve your cloud economics for cloud cost savings and realize new efficiencies with Cloud Control’s Cloud Migration, Modernisation and Management as s Service offerings.

Next Article
Different Ways Cloud Migration And Management Costs Goes Off The Rails.