If your IT department operates it, it's not a cloud.
Posted by Brad McMillan on Sun, Apr 22, 2012 @ 06:49 AM
When asked to do a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for comparison between on-premise and hosted IT in the cloud we always mention the intangibles that most companies don’t think about when comparing the two models. I have yet to find a Controller or CFO who has a line item on their IT budget for the cost of ‘under utilized infrastructure’ or the cost of ‘lost business’ when their infrastructure is unable to meet customer demand. 
I don't have anything against corporate IT, but if your cloud runs on your own infrastructure, you have deployed infrastructure ahead of customer demand and are paying for the privilege. The primary value in the cloud is the ability to leverage on-demand capacity of an external provider to align your infrastructure and customer demand. By running your own cloud (a.k.a. Virtualization 2.0), you are betting that your IT department can manage efficiencies comparable to public cloud providers.
With one of the biggest reasons for cloud adoption being cost savings, don’t forget to look at the ‘intangibles’ when it comes to cost as you decide on what your IT budget will include moving forward. At Apps on Tap, we will do a comprehensive analysis of your current IT budget and compare it side by side to our solution. The decision then becomes one of ‘when’ not ‘if’ you should move to the cloud.