Cloud-First Approach Can Reduce CapEx, Secure Data

Businesses need solid financial reasons for adopting a cloud-based strategy. A primary motivation is to eliminate the need to purchase expensive IT equipment such as servers, data storage, networking, security and databases. While trading the initial massive purchases for a monthly pay-as-you-go model makes sense on its own, there are a large number of other cost-saving areas and efficiency improvements in any cloud transition.

Along with reducing carbon footprint, maintenance costs and providing greater business flexibility, media organizations should factor in the benefits around data security when assessing the implications of a cloud transition.

Reducing Capital Costs

Moving to a cloud implementation significantly reduces the amount of infrastructure you have to buy. A study by KPMG found typical IT organizations spend roughly 30% of their budget on equipment such as servers, storage, firewalls, cables, networking gear and related power and cooling equipment. The study also found that shifting workload to the cloud can save companies 10%-20% of their IT budget.

Along with clear savings on the initial purchase of hardware, the cloud “pay-as-you-go” model also means an organization no longer needs to accurately predict their business needs over the projected life of that capital expense. In a cloud environment, businesses need pay only for the storage and compute that they are using, without the need to build for forecasted growth or peak usage.

Businesses need to buy for their peak storage and computing needs, but this means that most of the time the company’s servers are idling on standby. With cloud computing, only the amount of computing resources needed is charged, and therefore the cost of equipment and its maintenance will be reduced.

Cloud providers such as AWS can achieve higher economies of scale, allowing businesses to benefit from a lower compute cost than they would get on their own. Aggregating the usage of hundreds of thousands of customers lowers pay as-you-go prices.

Secure Protection Of Data

Data is often considered an organization’s most expensive resource. Managing this data internally means that each business is forced to become an expert in data backup, recovery and security. These highly-sought-after specializations are costly to staff and usually imply additional infrastructure to ensure that a company’s data is safe from both accidental and malicious harm. Even with all the right preparations, the process of recovering from downtime and the data that has been lost or stolen can be a time consuming and expensive process.

Cloud computing solutions inherently support backup and recovery both for storage and connectivity issues. The cloud provider becomes responsible for ensuring that data is backed up regularly, restored when lost and that connectivity is rerouted if a specific data center is no longer accessible.

Cloud providers offer their services to multiple companies. To compete, they must guarantee that their customers’ data is always secure. A cloud provider will always be certain that all the most up-to-date security practices and methods are used to limit access to malicious actors.

The Big Picture

Switching from on-premise to cloud-based systems will have an upfront positive financial impact on a project by reducing the initial capital requirements, freeing up cash for other investments. When considering the long-term ROI, it is important to factor in the continual cost savings related to power, maintenance and staffing as well as the efficiency gains unlocked by running a more secure operation that is flexible, allows for greater collaboration, scalability and accountability in its business operations.

For media organizations, cloud systems enable workflows that reduce travel, increase production efficiencies and facilitate the creation of more content. The combination of all these factors shows the true financial benefit of cloud-based systems.

Peter Abecassis is senior product marketing manager at Grass Valley.