Turning Data Center Costs Into Funding for Cloud-First Investments

Organizations already paying for on-premises data center management often say they cannot create space in their budget to afford investments in cloud-first data management. But conceding to the high cost of your existing data center approach does not create any room to grow or adapt your operations. Instead, it puts a ceiling on your data center performance—and locks you into IT infrastructure growing more outdated by the second.

At the same time, the cost constraints of major IT infrastructure projects are something every enterprise must account for. No business operates with unlimited budgets, and with legacy IT infrastructure already representing a major line expense for your organization, the prospect of pushing those costs even higher—even in the interest of reaping long-term savings—is often met with strong executive resistance.

Fortunately, it is not necessary to pay double for data center infrastructure as you make this transition from physical legacy solutions to a cloud or SaaS-based model. With the right migration experts and legacy specialists supporting your transition, data center transitions can be executed—and funded—by strategically scaling back existing IT infrastructure to create cost savings that will fund cloud-first investments.

Escaping Inefficient—and Inflexible—Data Management

Operating your own data center can encompass a wide range of expenses—including unnecessary costs that eats your budget for no good reason. When evaluating the relative value of on-premises data management as compared to cloud-based alternatives, your business should be accounting for each of the following costs:

  • Physical real estate
  • Data storage hardware
  • Staff to maintain data center
  • Building management to keep data center secure and operational
  • Electricity to keep systems online
  • Utilities to maintain temperature control of facility and hardware

When considering these costs, it’s also important to consider the relative inefficiency that can plague your data center. Research suggests that data centers end up wasting as much as 90 percent of the energy they pull from the energy grid. By switching to a cloud-first data center model, your business can leverage economies of scale to reduce some of that waste, which can in turn lead to more efficient IT expenditures.

These benefits may become more pronounced as your business grows, resulting in evolving and expanding data center needs. Compared to the dramatic expense increases that can come with upgrading your facilities and/or hiring new IT or building management staff, cloud-based data centers can offer scalable expenditures that are more efficiently designed and easier to fit into your operating budget.

As your IT infrastructure needs change, your business can take on these rising costs gradually, and with greater clarity regarding the costs themselves. This eliminates the growing pains that can typically affect organizations undergoing growth, while also creating new efficiencies in both your data center performance and cost management.

The Business Benefits of a ‘Save to Invest’ Strategy

When planning data center migration and other infrastructure projects, cost control is crucial—but those cost considerations can’t come at the expense of data center performance or availability.

This is why Origina promotes a “save to invest” strategy for enterprise clients. To optimize spending and minimize the cost of this major infrastructure project, Origina’s engineers and migration experts work with your company’s existing IT tech stack to strategically scale back its reliance on physical data center infrastructure. By clearing out operational waste and scaling back other expenses, your business can free up part of its budget that can be used to take a crucial first step toward a cloud or SaaS-based model.

While certain fixed data center costs are unavoidable, this “save to invest” strategy helps you better manage your spending to strategically clear a path for infrastructure transformation that has long been perceived as cost prohibitive. Once this process is underway, migration experts can guide your organization through a complete transition that unlocks new opportunities for scaling your operations, optimizing spending, and enabling new capabilities both today and into the future.

How Migration Experts Can Turn Strategy into Reality

Your in-house IT professionals are unlikely to possess the skill sets required to efficiently migrate data center operations online. And why would they? This type of specialized, one-time project has nothing to do with their day-to-day tasks and responsibilities.

But when it comes to moving away from a data center model that has leaned on legacy technology for years—if not decades—seasoned specialists can make all the difference. Origina’s migration experts have extensive knowledge across both legacy and cloud-based data center models, and can implement strategies for virtualizing IT resources and availability as you plan out your transition to cloud or SaaS solutions. Through strategic expense management, these specialists can reallocate parts of your IT budget to maximize your initial investments into cloud-based solutions and incrementally reduce your reliance on legacy IT infrastructure, resulting in gradual but cost-effective transitions that maintain data center availability while helping enterprise organizations escape even highly complex legacy tech stacks.

If the high price tag of data center transformation is stopping your organization from undertaking this migration project, it’s time to connect with industry experts that specialize in making these transitions painless and affordable for enterprise clients.

Learn more about how Origina’s team of experts can make this transition both possible and profitable—download our latest guide.

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