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Emeka moses
Emeka moses

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Practical use of TCO and Pricing Calculator for Cost Management.

This how organisations can make informed decisions by estimating the cost that will be saved when they chose to migrate their business operations from on premise to the cloud environment.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator: This tool helps businesses evaluate the complete cost of owning an asset over its entire lifecycle. It includes not only the initial purchase price but also ongoing costs such as maintenance, operation, training, and potential risks1.

Pricing Calculator: This tool allows businesses to estimate the costs of various services or products, helping them to compare different options and make informed decisions. It can include factors like service types, usage levels, and support requirement.

Let's explore this with the following steps.

Step 1
Type 'Total Cost of Ownership Calculator' in your browser

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Click on 'Total Cost of Ownership(TCO) Calculator|Microsoft Azure'

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Step 2
The first step on the Calculator is to define your workload. Here you will enter the details of your on premise workloads

(a) For Servers, Click on Add Server Workload

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Under Workload 1, I wiil select Windows operating system and leave other parameters at default

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Under Workload 2, I will select Web app under workload type and for operating system I will choose Linux.Other parameters will be left at default

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(b) For Databases, Click on Add Database

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Under Database 1 Source, I will select Microsoft SQL Server, and OS will be Windows. Others will be at default

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Under Database 2 Source, I will select MySQL Server, and OS will be Linux. Others will be at default

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(c)For Storage, Click on Add Storage and leave the parameters at default

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(d) For Networking, I will select the Destination Region as North Europe

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Step 3
Click Next

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Step 4
I will leave the Assumptions at default and click on Next to view the Report which is the Comparison of on premise cost of infrastructure with Azure cost of infrastructure for the same workload

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The Blue graph line indicate the On premise cost while the Green graph line shows the Azure cost for the same workload for a period of five years. There is a wide difference in the two costs. This difference is the cost saved by moving the organisation's workload to the cloud. It is indicated on the graph and this amount to $98,257 as shown on the top of the graph.

The two pie charts below shows the total on premise cost and total azure cost for the period amounting to $117,590 and $19,333 respectively

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The graph also indicate the percentages of cost of each of the services used by the company while on premise and when migrated to the cloud on Azure

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It is really worthwhile to migrate to the cloud. For instance, some costs that are incurred on premise are not incurred at all in the cloud i.e. Cost of building, equipping & maintaining Datacenter and Networking which are cared for by the Cloud Service Provider while other cost such as Compute services is reduced from 80% on premise to 69% in the cloud.

TCO is a very simple and easy to use tool.

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