Forrester Research : Research : File Storage Costs Less In The Cloud Than In-House

Forrester Research : Research : File Storage Costs Less In The Cloud Than In-House

FOR INFRASTRUCTURE & OPERATIONS PROFESSIONALS

FILE STORAGE COSTS LESS IN THE CLOUD THAN IN-HOUSE

We Calculate A 74% Cost Reduction, But It's Hard To Compare Apples To Apples

by Andrew Reichman

with Robert Whiteley, Eric Chi

There's a great deal of hype surrounding cloud delivery models of all flavors, with the assumption that it will usher in a new era of cheaper, better IT. But most I&O organizations struggle to compare the capital, operational, and staffing cost differences between internal and cloud storage. This document will break down the cost differences by modeling a common workload — file storage — built and deployed traditionally versus consumed through the public cloud. Our models reveal a significant cost difference, with the cloud-based model coming in 74% less expensive than I&O running it in-house. However, we encourage I&O leaders to use this document and the associated "Cost Analysis Tool: Cloud Versus Internal File Storage" Excel workbook as a tool and methodology for comparison. Customize the tool with numbers from your own environment and make a better decision as to whether cloud file storage makes sense in your business technology environment.