Unitiv Blog

Cloud computing is one of the fastest-growing trends in data center technology. Companies are able to offload much of their server and networking load to the cloud, thereby reducing their in-house technology infrastructure. This provides a higher degree of expertise, service and reliability than what most companies are able to create on their own. Cloud computing is a win-win for most businesses, at least in terms of the actual service that it provides to the business.

There's another way in which cloud computing is a boon, however. Cloud computing can actually save you significant amounts of money when it comes to your data center, both in terms of capital expenditures and in operations costs.

Less Hardware Means Less Capital Outlay

When you offload services and applications to the cloud, you reduce the amount of hardware you have on site at your data center. You cut down on the sheer number of servers present. This saves you, first of all, the significant amounts of capital involved in getting those servers on site and operational at your data center. You don't have to buy new hardware just to keep pace with business growth or application changes - the cloud paces itself with those needs.

Reduced Support Costs

Yes, you need to pay monthly service fees for cloud computing solutions. but you also reduce your ongoing maintenance costs and service contracts. In this way, your operating budget is reduced. While it’s not going to be reduced so much as to make the cloud computing solution a zero-sum game, the savings will nevertheless be significant.

We’ll lump training and personnel costs in here, as well. Because you don’t need to maintain servers and because you don’t have to worry about things like patching, a cloud computing solution is much less expensive than an in-house solution. You can let your in-house experts focus on what they’re really good at, and let your service provider worry about what’s going on in the cloud.

Don’t Underestimate Power Savings

Data centers – even the greenest of them – use a heck of a lot of power. They are huge buildings that have sometimes hundreds or even thousands of servers. They require not only power to operate the servers, but they require cooling and other environmental controls. For every server you place in a data center, you need that much more cooling capacity. Cloud computing offloads some of your energy costs by reducing the number of servers you need to have at your data center. Even installing solar panels, ultimately, won’t give you the kind of energy boost that you can get just by not having as much in the way of servers sucking juice out of the grid.