In late 2011, California-based firm Freshdesk opened to provide online customer and internal support for companies. Four years and some 28,000 customers later, the startup found it needed even more IT infrastructure to handle its booming business. The additional cost, however, turned out to be prohibitive.
So they turned to the cloud. Partnering up with Amazon Web Services, Freshdesk EC reserved instances to bring down their infrastructure costs by a whopping 75%.
Freshdesk is just one of many enterprises who have realized a way to leverage profits using cloud computing, but they are by no means the only one. Publishing Clearing House also saved money on their website using autoscaling and cloud bursting. So have a majority of companies that replied to a recent Rackspace survey.
So how does moving your IT infrastructure wholly or partially into the cloud save money?
Lower Capital Expense
The cloud’s IT infrastructure is already built. You don’t need to shell out money to buy and install expensive equipment and machines, nor do you need to buy real estate to house a data center.
This provides an incredible edge to small and medium enterprises that have small capital to start with. Instead of worrying about putting up their infrastructure, they can spend their money on personnel and production, where it matters most.
What’s more, simply renting cloud infrastructure makes it simpler to account for equipment depreciation in the books. Less equipment, less of a headache.
Lower Real Estate and Energy Costs
We’ve previously mentioned that with the cloud, businesses need not include rent for a physical data center in their books. But neither do they have to include the cost of electricity.
Instead, they rent cloud computing services. And because cloud providers use dynamically provisioned virtual computers, they consume less energy and give off less heat than a traditional data center.
That also translates to a smaller carbon footprint for eco-friendly companies!
Scalable Infrastructure and Payment model
The real power of the cloud is that you only pay for the service you user. That’s a powerful option for businesses with dynamic computer usage.
If at one time, you need more computing capacity, you can easily provision the additional resources you need in a matter of minutes. If the time comes when you need less, you can scale it back. Best of all, it’s entirely pay-as-you-go.
For additional savings, cloud provider Amazon Web Services has even come up with a spot market where you can specify maximum rate for compute capacity.
Lower Labor Costs and Better Usage of Time
Time is money, as they say, and never more so in the competitive IT industry. Few things are more time-consuming than having to maintain your own data center.
Your IT team would have to add to or upgrade machines, repair or replace anything that breaks down, maintain security measures, update programs, deal with computers that have reached EOL, and a myriad of other tasks. They could have been using that time for production, software testing, website creation, and experimenting on solutions.
The cloud saves you time. Menial tasks can be automated and server maintenance can be centralized. As a result your people are free to more important things, such as getting your product out at the fastest possible time and reap considerable profits. You may even do more with a smaller team.
If you haven’t already done so, it’s time to consider the cloud as a viable and cost-effective alternative to the traditional data center. What processes can your company move to the cloud? If you need to ask an expert, contact our cloud consultants at PolarSeven.
