Want a Specific Cloud ROI? How About 15% Savings Per User

Written by Michael Brown 1
February 27, 2014

Cloud-based file sharing (and the cloud in general) can provide business large and small with great bang for their buck. But just how much bang, exactly? The answer might just surprise you.

We’ve talked before about the sometimes elusive ROI of adopting the cloud. We’ve discussed how, sometimes, its greatest benefits cannot be measured in numbers (at least not right away). As an MSP, you know this explanation doesn’t always work. Your clients and prospects want hard numbers – and they want them now.

Thanks to a recent Computer Economics Report, you now have at least one great figure to throw their way. According to cloudtimes.org, switching to the cloud can help a company shave 15 percent on its IT budget per user. Here are a few important details and context behind the numbers:

Buying software licenses for employees is really cheaper than subscribe to cloud services? The SaaS allows real saving for CIOs? These are the questions that Computer Economics sought to answer by analyzing the cases of seven big companies that have largely migrated their IT systems to the cloud. The study came to the conclusion that these companies were on average able to save over 15 percent IT spending per user.

The analysis notes that the savings made not only come from spending cuts in the data center, but also those related to IT staff. With these gains, companies using the cloud are able to devote a higher percentage of their IT spending on new projects, and less to support. These savings in costs associated with strategic benefits such as agility, speed, scalability and argue in favor of organizations moving aggressively to the cloud.

Granted, many of your smaller clients and prospects will not have a CIO or a multi-million dollar IT budget, but 15% is nothing to sneeze at. More importantly, that’s just the average among large companies. We’d argue that with smaller companies, that ROI can be even greater.

Of course, there are other benefits besides cost savings for those who switch to the cloud:

Majority of respondents have already moved or are in process of moving their services to the cloud. Nearly 61 percent CIOs surveyed reported that cloud increases innovation and the business commercial agility. The innovation includes simplification of business process both in terms of commercial agreements and functionality; and flexibility in commercial contracts with cloud providers in terms of prices and services offered.

The cloud craze is just getting started. Even the government is getting into the action now, with an estimated investment of $18.5 billion by 2018. So as time passes, organizations will eventually stop asking for its ROI; it will be a given that it’s the most effective (and cost-effective) way to conduct business. This of course includes how business share and collaborate on files.

Until that day comes, be sure to frame the ROI of the cloud in terms of both quality and quantity.