W&F Issue 4 2018

www.wealthandfinance-news.com 6 Wealth & Finance International - Issue 4 2018 ONI Sales and Marketing Director, Kevin Kivlochan not only believes it’s high time the business model changed, providing organisations a fairer system and better overall value, he’s also doing something about it. All good things. “We’re all used to hearing about the virtues of the big players in cloud computing” says Kevin. “Let’s face it, they must have done something right to be so dominant in the market. But what was once positioned as a simple and easy to embrace proposition when compared to an on-premise alternative has not materialised as promised. “While a very simple and basic cloud service setup can be appealingly low-cost (even free), which is great for start-ups and small businesses, more moderately sized and larger organisations are discovering that this low bar to entry ultimately comes at an unexpected price. “If you’re at all familiar with cloud pricing models, you’ll know that they can go from simple to extremely complex in less time than it takes to spin up a Linux server. It is often these almost impenetrable pricing systems that are making business leaders and financial officers struggle to keep track all of the costs and charges.” Choices, choices. “In the good old days (circa 2006), pay-as-you- go cloud services, most notably AWS, were a relatively new, ground-breaking and feature-limited thing. Options were limited to a handful of services and prices were favourable. You got to pay for what you used without buying the whole farm, so to speak. Fast forward to the present and you’ll find that AWS now offers a staggering 200+ products across 70 services. Not so simple anymore. “But don’t worry, AWS have their very own ‘Simple Monthly Calculator’. So simple in fact, that there’s even a new growth market of third party tools to help you make the most of it. Inevitably, if you are going to offer such a breadth of products and services, simplicity was going to be one of the first things thrown out the window. They all have a myriad of options and more recently, a series of pricing incentives that cover a whole host of lock-in scenarios, including reserving future usage pricing and usage discounts when thresholds rise above certain percentiles. “It’s slightly ironic to think that while compute, storage and other cloud prices are dropping through mass adoption and economies of scale, more and more businesses are experiencing a disturbing rise in overall costs.” The best of all possible worlds. “But let’s assume for the moment that the current wisdom of moving a substantial amount of your business services to the cloud - hybrid or otherwise - is the right course of action. How do you work out your best option? “Whilst I accept that there are many more choices of cloud provider than there are consumer utility equivalents, the similarity between the two services is not a redundant one. Indeed, today as consumers, we are seeing governmental intervention to improve service, value and price transparency. For the very same reasons we currently face with cloud services - the pricing/ value model for most businesses has gotten so complex and confusing, we really don’t know how to spot a good or a bad deal until it’s far too late. “It’s high time that cloud services got a simpler costing model.” What price paradise? “At ONI, we have introduced an open, easy to understand and price transparent tariff system for all of our cloud services. Comprising just 12 It’s Time for a Better, Less Complex Cloud Pricing Model Cloud services are really cheap these days, right? If only it were that simple. 1804WF16 product lines, what was once a complex service selection minefield is now easier to understand and fairer to cloud customers. That’s it, a dozen options that cover everything you’ll need for your hybrid or cloud solution today and more importantly, tomorrow. “To explain this approach with some context, do you remember when mobile phones first came out? Back in the day, when they started becoming mainstream, it was commonplace to pay as much as 50p per call and 10p per text. However, we all paid it and pretended it was fine. Can you imagine any company trying this on today and succeeding? Although phones have evolved from this, the cloud still uses a model where you pay for both your ingress and egress usage. “Is anyone actually surprised that many businesses are opting to do things for themselves, preferring bare-metal solutions and bringing services back in-house? It’s not what they really want to do, it’s driven by hard economics. “Just like the mobile industry, change is inevitable in the cloud. So why wait? Why not force the change now? ONI have reached that point where we need to positively respond to growing customer demands and simplify our solution offerings, by adopting a model that is transparent, reasonably priced and all-inclusive. “Are we doing anything revolutionary here? I don’t think so. We’re addressing an issue that should have changed some time ago. Are we doing the right thing for customers? Absolutely. “If you’re even a little bit curious to check out what I’m suggesting, just get in touch with us and we can demonstrate how Cloud and Hybrid should be done.” For more about ONI and its cloud and hybrid offerings, go to oni.co.uk or call on 01582 429 999.