Adopting cloud solutions on a small scale and for short-term projects can be perceived as being expensive. However, the most significant cloud computing benefit is in terms of IT cost savings. Pay-as-you-go cloud services can provide more flexibility and lower hardware costs, but the overall price tag could end up being higher than you expected. Until you are sure of what will work best for you, it’s a good idea to experiment with a variety of offerings. You might also make use of the cost calculators made available by providers like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.
Best practices to reduce costs
- Try not to over provision your services, but rather look into using auto-scaling services.
- Ensure you have the option to scale DOWN as well as UP.
- Pre-pay and take advantage of reserved instances if you have a known minimum usage.
- Automate the process to start/stop your instances to save money when they are not being used.
- Create alerts to track cloud spending.
Disadvantages of cloud computing: Closing thoughts
Many organizations benefit from the agility, scale, and pay-per-use billing that cloud services offer. However, as with any infrastructure service, the suitability of cloud computing for your specific use case should be assessed in a risk-based evaluation. Build in time for research and planning to understand how the cloud will affect your business.