How to understand and calculate data protection costs
The uncertainty arising from today’s macroeconomic conditions is driving many IT departments to take a closer look at their budgets. Data remains the most critical asset for how companies operate and gain competitive advantages and it’s growing rapidly, which makes protecting it a top priority. Unfortunately, many organizations are protecting their growing data with a mix of software, hardware, and appliance-based solutions that have excessive hard costs from redundant copies, over-provisioned storage, excessive cloud costs, long-term licenses, as well as under-accounted-for soft costs like capacity management, software and hardware patching and upgrades, cloud management, and performance tuning. As organizations consider how to save money and do more with less, they’re turning to SaaS data protection for help. But for many IT leaders, comparing the cost of SaaS to traditional hardware, software, or appliance-based data protection solutions can be complicated. In fact, just because an organization is using SaaS solutions (who isn’t using SaaS somewhere in their organization?) doesn’t mean they have experience alleviating all of the hidden hard and soft costs of traditional solutions.
That’s why we’re excited to present a new 3-part webinar series with David Linthicum, Cloud Strategy Officer at Deloitte, author, and thought leader, that will give you the tools and methodology to assess both the costs and benefits of SaaS data protection versus traditional solutions for your own environment.
Icebergs vs. Clouds vs. SaaS
I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen a real iceberg (though Alaska is on my bucket list), but I am familiar with other icebergs – both personal and corporate. Personal icebergs are those tasks you give to yourself where you forget all of the preparation or maintenance required to get something done. Examples include painting a new room for the first time in 8 years or going on that backcountry camping trip for the first time in 6 years with someone who has no experience doing it. In the corporate world, these icebergs can come in the form of both projects and ongoing corporate services such as data protection solutions where the total effort and cost required to deliver a service is not fully understood or captured. Lots of people know aspects of the hard costs — the price of compute, storage, or a software license. Far fewer people know all of the other costs because it involves so many different teams and resources from sizing to installation, operations, patching, and upgrades. This is the unseen part of the iceberg. These are sometimes referred to as soft costs because they’re either variable or simply unseen. The tricky thing within corporate environments with changing leaders and staff is that, while some people may understand some of these processes and costs, few have simple ways to capture total organizational costs. In this changing economic environment, when everybody is looking more closely at how to reduce and control costs, understanding these differences is critical.
Clouds, by contrast, are visible to all who look up, but of course, not all clouds or cloud services are the same and I’m not just talking about the cost-per-minute of CPU or cost-per-TB of storage. In fact, pretty much every organization has received a surprise cloud bill. This is why it’s important to differentiate between building your IT services in the cloud (IaaS) vs. adopting Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), which delivers a service for you from the cloud. Learning how to decode the costs and value of when to build and run a solution, whether in your data center or in a public cloud, or adopt a SaaS solution is far easier than you think — if you know how to ask the right questions.
How to see data protection costs clearly
Seeing clearly is about more than what you know or see. When I want clarity I make sure I’m asking the right questions. I seek out trusted experts and friends and not only ask them my questions, but what they think I should ask, and who else I should consider for insight. In our effort to help you learn how to better compare the benefits and costs of traditional vs. SaaS solutions we sought the help of an industry expert, David S. Linthicum, an internationally recognized thought leader in cloud strategy. We’ve paired David up with our own CTO, Stephen Manley, to help you build your own frameworks and knowledge. In this 3-part webinar series, they’ll cover the following topics:
- How to compare hard & soft costs of traditional data protection solutions vs. SaaS
- How to explain the operational and strategic benefits of SaaS simplicity
- Why security is a key SaaS data protection advantage and why you should care
Are your IT investments layering on visible and hidden costs?
You might not be able to answer this question without attending our first webinar. What makes the comparison of traditional and SaaS data protection challenging is the result of changes that occur in both people and processes. Companies adopting SaaS solutions aren’t only adopting new technology; they’re changing how they operate. Understanding how to calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO) between SaaS and traditional hardware, software, and appliance-based data protection solutions can help you answer this question.
Join David Linthicum and Druva CTO Stephen Manley for the first in a three-part webinar series covering:
- Why so many enterprises get TCO wrong and how to get it right
- How to break down hard and soft costs and benefits
- How to compare and contrast SaaS and traditional hardware, software, and appliance-based data protection solutions
- How to build a TCO model for the best business outcome
- How to evaluate TCO for data protection
Finally, If you’re ready to kick some tires and get focused, I invite you to compare your data protection approach to SaaS with Druva’s 5-step TCO calculator. It’s a great way to think about whether you have icebergs or clouds in your data center.