How to figure out what the cost implications (hopefully savings) of cloud computing are? There are as many different pricing models as there are players.
Price per service being not the sole decision criteria, is certainly very important. Most major players offer some sort of ROI calculator or cost analyzer. Here’s what Amazon and Microsoft provide.
Amazon Cost Comparison Calculator
The AWS Economics Center provides access to information, tools, and resources to compare the costs of Amazon Web Services with IT infrastructure alternatives. Our goal is to help developers and business leaders quantify the economic benefits (and costs) of cloud computing.
As part of the center they offer a couple of tools:
- Amazon EC2 Cost Comparison Calculator. A more or less sophisticated Excel spreadsheet ”…designed to help you quantify the direct economic benefits (or costs) of cloud computing”.
- The AWS Simple Calculator. A simple html based utility helping with understanding the basic cost structure of Amazon Services you might want to use. It also provides a few customer examples to get you started
Windows Azure Platform TCO and ROI Calculator
The TCO calculator enables companies to not only find out which Windows Azure configuration might be the best fit for they scenario, it also helps to figure out what this will cost and how this compares to your current costs.
The TCO analyzer is available from the pricing info web page for the Windows Azure platform.
