Financial Analysis Assumptions

ASG recently completed a financial analysis comparing three scenarios: a Public Cloud Infrastructure from Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), a purchased Private Cloud infrastructure, and a leased Private Cloud infrastructure. Based on this analysis, a Private Cloud solution—whether leased or purchased—can provide significant cost advantages, as well as providing superior uptime and downstream flexibility for future growth.

For the purpose of this financial analysis, ASG:

• Assumed all instances of Public or Private Cloud server usage are active 24/7.
• Calculated the Public Cloud (Option 1) using 10 Extra Large CPU classes, 60 Large CPU classes, and 30 Small CPU classes.
• Used a scenario of 100 virtual server instances, for initial analysis purposes.
• Included a Silver level support in the costing scenario for the Private Cloud.
• Included all needed server, storage, switching and software infrastructure in the Private Cloud scenario.
• Examined all scenarios over a three year period with an assumed 15% growth rate in server instances (Public Cloud scenario) and virtual server deployment (Private Cloud scenario).
• Allocated maintenance & support costs in the year they occur.
• Determined the company’s technical staff had the skills to install and configure this infrastructure themselves, and so did not include professional services to install the Private Cloud infrastructure.

ASG included costs for rack, power, space, etc. at a co-located data center facility in the Private Cloud scenario, using a quote for a 24 month commitment at a local datacenter co-location facility. ASG also procured a quote for a Phoenix co-lo that had higher initial one-time costs with a lower monthly charge. However, ASG determined that the benefits of having local access to the equipment out-weighed the lower monthly charges. The difference between the two proposals over a three year period is approximately $2,000.

Advanced Systems Group—Stairway to the Cloud