小公司正在避免陷阱，以防在移到云服务后造成预算空洞。

大多数专家都认为：云已经过了大热的阶段并将开始实现有形收益。

根据那些已经使用或正在考虑使用云服务的IT企业执行执行官说的，转移到云端会导致成本的上升，而有些成本还无法预见。

虽然啊这些成本不会影响企业从云计算中获利，但它们将对云服务的整体成本效益分析造成影响。

转移和储存数据

转移大量的数据到公共云服务上和长期储存数据的工作每年将花费数千美元。许多公司可能不会意识到其中包含的花费。

“一次转移就会花费数千美元。” WhitePages Inc.的IT和运营部高级主管Hernan Alvarez说道。WhitePages Inc.坐落于西雅图，为超过2亿的个人和1500万家企业提供在线信息联系。

网络带宽是转移数据的主要花费：云供应商可能更改上载和下载的收费。即使数据和系统在线下，仍然存在内部的劳动力费用。“人们认为使用云后不会有劳动力费用，但当你增加了工作量后，管理大量的云设备将很复杂，就像管理一堆服务器一样。”Alvarez说道。另一个主要花费是云中的长期数据储存。“考虑一下未来3年的数据增长速率，储存数据的周期花费将会很高，”Alvarez说道。当数据储存在云端时，“你每月都要付这些钱”。

但这些花费“将被你忽略，如果你没有完全理解云模式的话，”他说。“如果你考虑到CPU、容量、储存需要及时间图表，你将很好地了解这些花费，并考虑是否可以从内部方面降低花费。”

WhitePages考虑过使用云端进行数据备份，但在对8家供应商的全面评估之后，这家公司认为转移到云端太贵了，是将数据储存在内部的成本的3到4倍，Alvarez说道。因此这家公司选择了将数据长期储存在公司的私人云里。

通常来说，非储存目的而使用公共云计算将消除内部部署和保持应用的必要。WhitePages已经使用了2年公共云服务，且现在使用Salesforce.com、SuccessFactors、ADP、WebEx、Yammer及其他供应商的11个基于云的应用。这使节省下来的花费超过了没有预期到的花费，Alvarez说道。

多家供应商应用的整合

Pacific Coast Building Products希望在通过一个较大的方式使用云计算，它已经评估了多家供应商的服务。但Rancho Cordova，一家在加州的建筑业货品和服务供应商，限制了它的云的使用因为它还为实现收益，首席信息官Mike O’Dell说道。

对此有两个原因，首先是由于从不同的云供应商整合软件的困难性，其次是Pacific Coast如果自己整合将造成成本上升的事实。

比如，这家公司在邮件方面使用Microsoft Exchange，在语音邮件方面使用思科的Unity Unified Messaging，而它像将这二者整合成云服务使用。“对两个应用的整合，至少最近一次我们还没有找到，”O’Dell说道。

如果没有整合，那么用户将无法使用他们现在有的一些功能，比如在手机上收到邮件时自动删除手机上的语音邮件。

一些大而复杂的应用的整合也是一个挑战，比如ERP，O’Dell说道。

比如，“为了将SAP放在云上，我们必须放弃一些功能或在整合上花费很多钱，”他说。“也许这只是技术不成熟的问题，但在整合方面存在很多隐藏的费用。如果你无法看清这个事实，那么最终的经济状况可能没有你想的那么好。”

测试软件

 移植到云前的软件测试将造成意料之外的花费。

“我们在为未曾运行在云配置上的应用测试和排除故障时，将碰到意外的花费，”纽约州波基普西Marist College的首席执行官兼IT部副主席Bill Thirsk说道。

这所大学正在将一个大规模的ERP系统移到一个私人云上，他们使用的是供应商还未认可服务器。Marist通过这个私人云为学生、教职工和研究机构提供注册、帐单查询及付款等在线服务。

Thirsk表示学校“99%”的ERP移植“进行地很顺利，且通过使用云配置，我们总共节省了十几万美元。”但是，他补充道：“在已经运行了900个虚拟服务器的云中稳定系统给了我们一个很大的挑战。”

额外的花费是为了“解决哪个版本的操作系统和数据库可以运行的问题，”Thirsk说道，“这个问题需要更改一些代码，而找出哪些代码需要更改会花掉一些时间和精力。”

在应用没有全部充分利用云计算的功能时，隐形费用也会出现。

我们确认ERP的设计足够复杂，可以充分利用云配置提供的处理器、内存、缓存、硬件储存和网络连接，”Thirsk说道。但这还没有完成，修改软件代码需要“大量”应用开发者和系统程序员的时间。“我们预期可以在性能上提高30%，但这可不是免费的，”他说道。

租金和日常花费

IT执行官在将系统移到云端上还可能遇到另一个花费，这个花费他们认为不应让他们来承担。

“当然，有许多费用适合托管系统相关联的，但并非全部，像电费和房租都是从我的IT预算中付的，”美国农业食品和营养服务部（FNS）的首席信息官Jonathan Alboum说道，“因为云，这些基础设施的费用被归到了总费用里，所以我正在付一些原本不属于我IT预算里的费用。”

从2010年的夏天开始，FNS就使用一个亚马逊的云服务来运行一个应用实行它的补充营养援助计划（SNAP），这个计划过去因提供食品券而著名。

一个叫做SNAP Retailer Locator的工具，提供一个在线地图来帮助人们找到接受SNAP借记卡的零售商。FNS决定将应用移到云端是因为设置需要快速登录并且可高度扩展以及一些其他的原因。

自从他使用了基于云的服务后，Alboum必须支付每个月的费用并制定一个新的预算。“总的来说，云端易管理且降低了政府的开销，”他说道，“但这和我们的那些传统经历不同。”

这不是云服务托管比内部托管更贵的问题。“我认为这是一个现金流动的问题，”Alboum解释道。“如果我要付月费，在需要付费时，我就需要有足够的预算来支付。如果是传统的方式，我将一次性将硬件和相关服务的费用付掉。新的模式可能比较便宜，但需要更改预算机制。”

关于云的许多东西都很新，专家认为公司评估云服务时需要兼顾费用和潜在效益两个方面。在2011年四月份的一份关于云服务的报告中，Gartner提到IT执行官在云服务革命期应采取措施管理固有风险和意料之外的费用。

云模式“不成熟写充满潜在危险”，Gartner的分析师Frank Ridder说道，“云计算的不断发展会产生很多机会和代价高挑战。公司需要了解这些挑战并开发实事求是的云采购策略和合同用以降低风险。”

云采购周期包括四个要素：采购策略、供应商的选择、制定合同和管理，Ridder说。

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.