In deciding whether to switch from an on-premises application to the cloud—a decision that is becoming more imperative by the year—a new Whitepaper released by Nucleus Research highlights the many reasons cloud saves money.
Cloud Delivers 2.1 Times More ROI lays out some surprising numbers.
In the first place, cloud application projects deliver 2.1x times the relative return on investment (ROI) of on-premises ones – up 24% since their 2012 analysis, which marked the difference at 1.7x times. And because cloud applications have become increasingly feature-rich, they offer increasing ROI, with little end in sight.
“Companies continue to invest in cloud applications and infrastructure projects because of the lower initial cost and faster time to value. As more and more vendors have invested in moving their solutions to the cloud, the breadth of availability of cloud platforms, applications, and services has grown – as well as the complexity of cloud applications available,” writes Rebecca Wettemann, analyst for Nucleus.
This means that all the great things about cloud applications—adaptability, integration, and customization, not to mention relatively low startup costs and negligible maintenance—are still true, and only become more so as time moves on.
Ways to Save with the Cloud
Cloud Delivers 2.1 Times More ROI points out two main numbers that should make anyone considering a switch to the cloud sit up and pay attention.
Consulting and Implementation: The cost to implement cloud applications is 63% lower than on-premise, up from 40% in 2012. (That’s a wowser.)
Support Personnel: The cost in support personnel for cloud applications is on average 55% lower than on-premises.
Why is the cloud so amazing? It changes seamlessly right along with your business, without any burdensome need to roll out a bi-annual upgrade that requires debugging and retraining. As companies like yours realize the multiple benefits of cloud applications, they can feed their insanely high ROI back into their company to grow it in more and better ways.
More Benefits of Cloud Applications
Here’s a couple of other things the Whitepaper points out. (Spoiler Alert: Cloud is better in still more ways.)
If something goes wrong, the vendor for the cloud application has to fix things. And they have to fix it all the way, not just “good enough to keep working”… unlike an on-premises IT department might need to do.
It’s also a good idea to find a vendor you can trust. It prevents the likelihood to “cut and run”—as Nucleus puts it—in the first six months. Save yourself the hassle of switching from a less than satisfactory vendor by doing some additional research on the front end and finding a partner who really understands the needs of your business.
A final number to help persuade you that 2.1 times really is the ROI for cloud implementation: cloud applications use an average of 91% less energy than on-premises. That’s great for your budget and the environment.
The lower startup costs, the flexibility of the applications, the reduced need for support personnel, the maintenance responsibility of the vendor, and the environmental savings—these provide overwhelming proof that “it’s hard to argue against the cloud.”
Download the Nucleus Research Whitepaper
