With companies continuing to migrate to the cloud, finding the right cloud provider often proves to be challenging for many reasons – one being predictable billing. There are several different options and pricing models out there and it can easily get overwhelming when trying to decide which is best for your business. Gartner predicts that cloud spending will exceed 45% of all enterprise IT spending by 2026. With cloud spending continuing to rise, now is the time to act on what your business needs are and what options are available to you.
Here’s a breakdown of a few main components of cloud costs to help provide some clarity as you make considerations.
Compute, Storage, and Memory (RAM)
Each of these determine the cost of your cloud services. Most cloud providers base your compute costs off of how many virtual cores, per GB storage, and RAM you need. Depending on how robust you want your virtual infrastructure to be will determine your monthly cost. Some providers will bundle services not required and will include hidden costs for things like disk transactions and overall utilization. Beware of the hidden costs and be sure you have a trusted cloud advisor.
Ingress/Egress and Bandwidth
One of the hidden costs in the cloud are the ingress and egress fees. Most providers will bill you for every bit of data coming and going from your environment. If you’re business is constantly sending and receiving data, this can add up very quickly. As far as bandwidth, you’ll typically be charged based off of the speed and usage of the internet required. If you want faster speed or are sending larger data files, you’ll often pay more. If your data traffic is minimal, that will require less bandwidth and therefore less spend.
Support
It’s common for cloud providers to nickel and dime you for support. Even with provider supplied support, it can typically be quite a daunting task just to get in touch with someone from support. You could be waiting days before you actually reach a human being. This can be detrimental if there’s an issue that is impacting your business. Be sure to understand your providers support service level agreements (SLA’s). Poor response times can result in a significant amount of financial and productivity loss.
Although there are many cost savings in the cloud, it’s important to understand all your options and where many of these costs can add up if you’re not aware of what your business needs are. vArida isn’t just your average cloud provider. Our cloud services are locally owned and managed and can significantly reduce your costs. We don’t charge any ingress or egress fees so depending on how much data is being transferred, this could result in huge savings for your business. vArida also offers bandwidth upgrades so you can scale up as your organization grows. Lastly, you can count on support and subject matter experts before, during, and after implementation – no more 1-800-get-in-line. Our support team is readily available to answer your call should you ever have any questions or issues.
If you’d like to explore more of vArida’s cloud offerings, schedule a demo today!
