Cloud Computing Benefits: Both Financial and Operational

According to an article Two primary benefits of cloud computing are financial and operational

Consider the financial benefits of the cloud.   A survey by KPGM found that 70 percent of businesses say that the cloud has already brought them significant efficiencies and cost savings.

Rick Madan, executive director of network services for TEKsystems, said that “the total cost of ownership of software and hardware goes down for end users since they are removed from the business of buying, licensing, and maintaining associated assets.  Furthermore, the revenue-and-service premise for cloud providers is built on a ‘pay as you go’ model so as an end-using company, instead of getting bogged down in the sunk costs of servicing debt related to sometimes idle IT processes and resources, the cloud model allows you only pay for those actually utilized by the business at any given moment.”

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There are operational benefits from the cloud too.  The introduction of cloud computing can be transformative to the operations side of the business.  Tasks that focus on the lifecycle management of hardware and software often get offloaded from the business to the cloud provider.  Tasks like change control, versioning, upgrades and updates, release management, storage, process job management, and data center mirroring are either eliminated or greatly reduced.