Three Factors for Evaluating the ROI of Your Data Management Services
Purchasing cloud services from Microsoft Azure or AWS may seem like the simplest solution for your organization. But it is often also the costliest. From your standard monthly costs to new service fees, it seems the list never ends on your monthly bill.
At Net-Tech, we want you to understand exactly where you might be overspending on your data management services – and your options.
Here are three factors you can use to determine whether or not you’re seeing the ROI on your data management services from your cloud provider.
1. Monthly Costs
You might be surprised by how quickly your monthly IT budget adds up. Azure and AWS set a separate price for every little feature, processor, hard drive, amount of RAM, etc. All those prices can be tweaked and edited for each service. Hence the 20-page monthly bill.
Also, it’s a common misconception that businesses must store everything in the cloud. But that’s not the case. And if you do, you could be wasting money. Net-Tech has had 10-15 clients who have inadvertently tripled their IT budget by spending too much, typically on Azure.
Here is a common situation nonprofits find themselves in. Azure will offer a $5,000 credit if they purchase Azure data management. Then, suddenly their bill is $1,000 a month. The nonprofit originally chose the service because the credit and initial pricing seemed like a good deal or a free service, but now they are hitched with this mission-critical service that is costing them an arm and a leg.
2. Licensing & ROI
Concerning licensing, your cloud services provider may insist that you need a core processor with 32 gigs of RAM, striped discs with spinning hard drives and all the bells and whistles, and a server 2020 data center standard. They have you pay by the minute for how much you use those services.
A server like this can cost you $1,000 a month. If you were to go out and buy a server with the same specs, the ROI would be approximately 10 months. The difference is it’s not in a data center with redundant power. That cost does not even include the backing up or management of that server.
Your ROI could be better if you purchase a $10,000 server yourself rather than pay the monthly fees to these providers. Or you could look at a different model completely.
We can improve your ROI. See how we've helped our clients.
3. Ingress & Regress Fees
It’s also difficult to determine what your costs are going to be because of the ingress and egress fees. Those fees are related to the amount of data flowing into and out of the Azure and AWS data centers.
You’re charged by the megabyte and gigabyte. Compare that to your own internet service provider. They don’t charge you for your unlimited data transfer – you’re limited by your bandwidth. But that’s not the case with these services.
You most likely don’t know how much data is going in and out of your data center when you make the jump to Azure. Before, these charges did not exist, and now, they could make up a large portion of your IT budget. If your organization utilizes an intensive database that pushes data back and forth, that could amount to thousands of dollars of data fees.
When We Recommend AWS or Azure
If a customer anticipated scaling up rapidly without notification, then it might be appropriate to utilize Azure or AWS. If you are suddenly going to have 300,000 clicks on a website, then that’s about the only time when it’s necessary to utilize Azure or AWS for data management services if you are a small to medium-sized business with regular file-sharing needs.
The Net-Tech Approach to Pricing for Data Management Services
Our approach to pricing at Net-Tech is standardized. We don’t charge you separately for different features and processors; we use a standard pricing base and then offer a “combo meal.”
If you need a server that’s outside of the Total Care Cloud infrastructure, you pay us to host the application and we determine that rate based on the manufacturer’s specs. That determines how it’s set up, managed, backed up and maintained. It’s a flat fee with no guesswork.
You also don’t need to devote accounting manpower to managing your data bill. Your Microsoft Azure bill could be 20 pages long. Net-Tech’s bill is just one line.
We Take Pride in Quality of Customer Service
When something breaks, or you’re looking to add a new service, or you just have a question about your data management, you need to be able to speak to someone familiar with your organization. That’s difficult, if not impossible, with enterprise corporations such as Microsoft and Amazon. You can’t get ahold of the techs to verify if the bill is correct or not.
This approach to customer service is not built for the typical business owner’s expectations. Our team at Net-Tech values your organization and your time. When you call us, we’ll connect you with the technicians and engineers who are responsible for your IT program. Our goal is to make data management easy for you.
