小公司正在避免陷阱，以防在移到云服務后造成預算空洞。

大多數(shù)專家都認為：云已經過了大熱的階段并將開始實現(xiàn)有形收益。

根據那些已經使用或正在考慮使用云服務的IT企業(yè)執(zhí)行執(zhí)行官說的，轉移到云端會導致成本的上升，而有些成本還無法預見。

雖然啊這些成本不會影響企業(yè)從云計算中獲利，但它們將對云服務的整體成本效益分析造成影響。

轉移和儲存數(shù)據

轉移大量的數(shù)據到公共云服務上和長期儲存數(shù)據的工作每年將花費數(shù)千美元。許多公司可能不會意識到其中包含的花費。

“一次轉移就會花費數(shù)千美元。” WhitePages Inc.的IT和運營部高級主管Hernan Alvarez說道。WhitePages Inc.坐落于西雅圖，為超過2億的個人和1500萬家企業(yè)提供在線信息聯(lián)系。

網絡帶寬是轉移數(shù)據的主要花費：云供應商可能更改上載和下載的收費。即使數(shù)據和系統(tǒng)在線下，仍然存在內部的勞動力費用。“人們認為使用云后不會有勞動力費用，但當你增加了工作量后，管理大量的云設備將很復雜，就像管理一堆服務器一樣。”Alvarez說道。另一個主要花費是云中的長期數(shù)據儲存。“考慮一下未來3年的數(shù)據增長速率，儲存數(shù)據的周期花費將會很高，”Alvarez說道。當數(shù)據儲存在云端時，“你每月都要付這些錢”。

但這些花費“將被你忽略，如果你沒有完全理解云模式的話，”他說。“如果你考慮到CPU、容量、儲存需要及時間圖表，你將很好地了解這些花費，并考慮是否可以從內部方面降低花費。”

WhitePages考慮過使用云端進行數(shù)據備份，但在對8家供應商的全面評估之后，這家公司認為轉移到云端太貴了，是將數(shù)據儲存在內部的成本的3到4倍，Alvarez說道。因此這家公司選擇了將數(shù)據長期儲存在公司的私人云里。

通常來說，非儲存目的而使用公共云計算將消除內部部署和保持應用的必要。WhitePages已經使用了2年公共云服務，且現(xiàn)在使用Salesforce.com、SuccessFactors、ADP、WebEx、Yammer及其他供應商的11個基于云的應用。這使節(jié)省下來的花費超過了沒有預期到的花費，Alvarez說道。

多家供應商應用的整合

Pacific Coast Building Products希望在通過一個較大的方式使用云計算，它已經評估了多家供應商的服務。但Rancho Cordova，一家在加州的建筑業(yè)貨品和服務供應商，限制了它的云的使用因為它還為實現(xiàn)收益，首席信息官Mike O’Dell說道。

對此有兩個原因，首先是由于從不同的云供應商整合軟件的困難性，其次是Pacific Coast如果自己整合將造成成本上升的事實。

比如，這家公司在郵件方面使用Microsoft Exchange，在語音郵件方面使用思科的Unity Unified Messaging，而它像將這二者整合成云服務使用。“對兩個應用的整合，至少最近一次我們還沒有找到，”O’Dell說道。

如果沒有整合，那么用戶將無法使用他們現(xiàn)在有的一些功能，比如在手機上收到郵件時自動刪除手機上的語音郵件。

一些大而復雜的應用的整合也是一個挑戰(zhàn)，比如ERP，O’Dell說道。

比如，“為了將SAP放在云上，我們必須放棄一些功能或在整合上花費很多錢，”他說。“也許這只是技術不成熟的問題，但在整合方面存在很多隱藏的費用。如果你無法看清這個事實，那么最終的經濟狀況可能沒有你想的那么好。”

測試軟件

 移植到云前的軟件測試將造成意料之外的花費。

“我們在為未曾運行在云配置上的應用測試和排除故障時，將碰到意外的花費，”紐約州波基普西Marist College的首席執(zhí)行官兼IT部副主席Bill Thirsk說道。

這所大學正在將一個大規(guī)模的ERP系統(tǒng)移到一個私人云上，他們使用的是供應商還未認可服務器。Marist通過這個私人云為學生、教職工和研究機構提供注冊、帳單查詢及付款等在線服務。

Thirsk表示學校“99%”的ERP移植“進行地很順利，且通過使用云配置，我們總共節(jié)省了十幾萬美元。”但是，他補充道：“在已經運行了900個虛擬服務器的云中穩(wěn)定系統(tǒng)給了我們一個很大的挑戰(zhàn)。”

額外的花費是為了“解決哪個版本的操作系統(tǒng)和數(shù)據庫可以運行的問題，”Thirsk說道，“這個問題需要更改一些代碼，而找出哪些代碼需要更改會花掉一些時間和精力。”

在應用沒有全部充分利用云計算的功能時，隱形費用也會出現(xiàn)。

我們確認ERP的設計足夠復雜，可以充分利用云配置提供的處理器、內存、緩存、硬件儲存和網絡連接，”Thirsk說道。但這還沒有完成，修改軟件代碼需要“大量”應用開發(fā)者和系統(tǒng)程序員的時間。“我們預期可以在性能上提高30%，但這可不是免費的，”他說道。

租金和日常花費

IT執(zhí)行官在將系統(tǒng)移到云端上還可能遇到另一個花費，這個花費他們認為不應讓他們來承擔。

“當然，有許多費用適合托管系統(tǒng)相關聯(lián)的，但并非全部，像電費和房租都是從我的IT預算中付的，”美國農業(yè)食品和營養(yǎng)服務部（FNS）的首席信息官Jonathan Alboum說道，“因為云，這些基礎設施的費用被歸到了總費用里，所以我正在付一些原本不屬于我IT預算里的費用。”

從2010年的夏天開始，F(xiàn)NS就使用一個亞馬遜的云服務來運行一個應用實行它的補充營養(yǎng)援助計劃（SNAP），這個計劃過去因提供食品券而著名。

一個叫做SNAP Retailer Locator的工具，提供一個在線地圖來幫助人們找到接受SNAP借記卡的零售商。FNS決定將應用移到云端是因為設置需要快速登錄并且可高度擴展以及一些其他的原因。

自從他使用了基于云的服務后，Alboum必須支付每個月的費用并制定一個新的預算。“總的來說，云端易管理且降低了政府的開銷，”他說道，“但這和我們的那些傳統(tǒng)經歷不同。”

這不是云服務托管比內部托管更貴的問題。“我認為這是一個現(xiàn)金流動的問題，”Alboum解釋道。“如果我要付月費，在需要付費時，我就需要有足夠的預算來支付。如果是傳統(tǒng)的方式，我將一次性將硬件和相關服務的費用付掉。新的模式可能比較便宜，但需要更改預算機制。”

關于云的許多東西都很新，專家認為公司評估云服務時需要兼顧費用和潛在效益兩個方面。在2011年四月份的一份關于云服務的報告中，Gartner提到IT執(zhí)行官在云服務革命期應采取措施管理固有風險和意料之外的費用。

云模式“不成熟寫充滿潛在危險”，Gartner的分析師Frank Ridder說道，“云計算的不斷發(fā)展會產生很多機會和代價高挑戰(zhàn)。公司需要了解這些挑戰(zhàn)并開發(fā)實事求是的云采購策略和合同用以降低風險。”

云采購周期包括四個要素：采購策略、供應商的選擇、制定合同和管理，Ridder說。

Most experts agree: The cloud is moving past the hype stage and starting to deliver tangible benefits.

But moving to the cloud can also mean added costs, some of which are unexpected, according to IT executives whose organizations have implemented or are considering cloud services.

While these costs wouldn't necessarily prevent companies from getting real business value out of cloud computing, they could have an impact on the overall cost-benefit analysis of cloud services.

Moving and storing data

It can cost tens of thousands of dollars per year to move large volumes of data to public cloud services and to store that data for long periods of time. Many companies might not be aware of the expenses involved.

"A one-time move can [cost] thousands of dollars," says Hernan Alvarez, senior director of IT and operations at WhitePages Inc., a Seattle-based company that provides online contact information for more than 200 million people and 15 million businesses.

Network bandwidth accounts for much of the cost of moving data: Cloud providers might charge upload and download fees. And even though data and systems are being hosted off-site, there are internal labor costs. "People think there are no labor costs [with the cloud], but as you scale up [to] handle workload, there's a complexity with managing large numbers of cloud instances, just like managing a large number of servers," Alvarez says. Another big cost is for long-term data storage in the cloud. "When you consider the data growth rates over the next three years, the life-cycle cost of data can be really high," Alvarez says. "You continue to pay for that every month" when data is stored in the cloud.

But these costs are "only unexpected if you don't fully comprehend the cloud model," he says. "If you think about CPUs, capacity and storage [needs] and chart that over time, you can get a pretty good handle on what the costs are and if you can do it more cost-effectively internally."

WhitePages considered using the cloud for data backup, but after extensively evaluating eight vendors, the company determined it would be too expensive -- as much as three to four times what it would cost to keep data internally, Alvarez says. So the company opted to handle long-term data storage on-site, in its private cloud.

In general, though, using public cloud computing for purposes other than storage eliminates the need to deploy and maintain applications internally. WhitePages has been using public cloud services for about two years and now uses 11 cloud-based applications from Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors, ADP, WebEx, Yammer and other providers. This has led to savings that greatly outweigh any of the unexpected costs, Alvarez says.

Integrating apps from multiple vendors

Pacific Coast Building Products wants to start using cloud computing in a big way and has evaluated services from several vendors. But the Rancho Cordova, Calif.-based provider of goods and services to the construction industry has limited its cloud usage so far because the economics are not quite there yet, says CIO Mike O'Dell.

Two reasons for this are the difficulty of integrating software from disparate vendors in the cloud, and the fact that Pacific Coast would incur added costs if it tried to handle the integration on its own.

For example, the company uses Microsoft Exchange for email and Cisco's Unity Unified Messaging for voice mail, and it's interested in using both of those applications as cloud services. "Integration between [Exchange and Unity] in the cloud, at least the last time we looked, wasn't there," O'Dell says.

Without integration, users wouldn't have some of the capabilities they have now, such as automatic deletion of voice-mail messages on their phones when they receive the messages via email.

The same sorts of integration challenges exist with larger and more complex applications, such as ERP, O'Dell says.


For example, "for us to put [SAP] in the cloud means we'd have to give up features or spend a lot of money on integration," he says. "Maybe it's just a matter of immature technology, but the integration side is where the hidden costs are. If you don't look at this right out of the gate, you might not be as happy with the economics at the end as you thought you would be."

Testing software

The need to test software before migrating to the cloud can also result in unforeseen costs.

"We bumped into some expense that we did not expect for testing and debugging a vendor app that had not been run in a cloud configuration before," says Bill Thirsk, vice president of IT and CIO at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

The college was moving a large-scale ERP system onto a private cloud, using servers that the vendor hadn't yet approved. Marist uses its private cloud to provide online services such as registration, billing inquiries and payments to students, faculty and research organizations.

Thirsk says "99 percent" of the college's ERP migration activities "went very smoothly, and overall we saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by using a cloud configuration." But, he adds, "stabilizing the system within a cloud that already supported 900 virtualized servers gave us quite a challenge."

The added expense was to "untangle the maze of what versions [of] the operating systems and databases would work," Thirsk says. "It was [a] matter of changing some code. It took some time and effort to figure out exactly what lines needed to be changed."

Hidden costs can also crop up if applications aren't primed to take full advantage of the capabilities of cloud computing.


"We made the assumption that the ERP programming was sophisticated enough to take advantage of all the processors, memory, caches, storage devices and network connections that the cloud configuration offered," Thirsk says. But it wasn't, and revising the software code required a "considerable amount" of application developer and systems programmer time. "We have seen a 30 percent increase in performance, but it wasn't free," he says.

Rent and utilities

IT executives who move systems to the cloud might encounter another unexpected cost if they suddenly find themselves paying expenses that wouldn't normally be their responsibility.

"There are, of course, many costs associated with hosting a system internally, but not all of them, like power and rent, are paid out of my IT budget," says Jonathan Alboum, CIO at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS). "With the cloud, these basic infrastructure charges are baked into the overall cost, so I'm now paying for some things that previously didn't come out of my IT budget."

Since the summer of 2010, the FNS has been using an Amazon.com cloud service to host an application that's offered through the agency's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides the benefits that used to be known as food stamps.

The tool, called the SNAP Retailer Locator, provides an online map that helps people find retailers that accept SNAP debit cards. The FNS decided to put the application in the cloud because that setup allowed for a quick launch and was highly scalable, among other reasons.

Since he's using a cloud-based service, Alboum has to pay new monthly costs and take a new approach to budgeting. "Overall, [the cloud] is very manageable and likely results in overall lower costs for the government," he says. "But it is different from what we've traditionally experienced."

It's not a matter of the cloud service costing more than in-house hosting. "I think of this as a cash-flow issue," Alboum explains. "If I'm going to pay monthly costs, I need to have available budget to cover those costs at the time I incur them. In the more traditional model, I would purchase hardware and associated services in a lump sum. The new model is likely less expensive, but requires a change to budgeting practices."

Much about the cloud is still relatively new, and experts say organizations evaluating cloud services need to look at both the costs and potential benefits. In a report on cloud services in April 2011, Gartner noted that IT executives "should take steps to manage inherent risks and unexpected costs during the cloud services revolution."

The cloud model is "immature and fraught with potential hazards," says Gartner analyst Frank Ridder. "Cloud computing is driving discontinuity that introduces exciting opportunities and costly challenges. Organizations need to understand these changes and develop realistic cloud sourcing strategies and contracts that can reduce risk."

The cloud sourcing life cycle includes four main elements: sourcing strategy, vendor selection, contracting, and management and governance, says Ridder.