Crystal Rae
Once convinced to install a cloud platform to manage your business, price is one of the most relevant criteria that any prospect considers when selecting a particular one.
In the search for that compatibility between the needs of the company and the characteristics of the software, it is important to understand the different factors that come into play to determine the costs and profiles of cloud services. In this article, we present four of the most important ones.
SPECIALIZED IN DIFFERENT FIELDS
Suppliers often have different approaches and markets. For example, in terms of size, some are oriented to small and medium-sized companies, while others more robust serve large companies.
Some more place the emphasis on their offer of specific services or different niches and productive sectors.
This specialization is a great advantage, as long as companies do the task of determining their profile first and then find the most tailored solution.
THERE IS NO STANDARD MEASUREMENT
While some companies offer better RAM features, others differ in the CPU. The standard way to proceed is to measure the processing power that a vendor brings to a business.
There are different pricing models and not all providers allow combinations of memory and processing. Some offer default combinations in which the client must accept the number of cores based on the memory that the application requires.
DIFFERENT COLLECTION SCHEMES
As with other lines of business, cloud service providers employ a variety of charging schemes. These are the three main models:
- Resource-based – Depending on the resources it needs, a company pays for each server along with an additional fee for all the components that go into it, such as storage, memory, and network requests.
- Feature-based or function-based – Operates on the functions that developers must use, including push notifications, API calls, and API versions; each has a cost added to the supplier’s final quote.
- Tier-Based – Businesses select service tiers from a list and cost is determined by usage; they can adjust the plan if they end up needing more or fewer services than they expected.
COVERAGE AND FLEXIBILITY
Knowing the different models and specializations of service providers is important, but it is also important to ask questions that in turn prevent surprises in future billings:
Does it provide long-term price protection? If the answer is yes, vendor dependency can be avoided.
Does it allow to change prices in peak months? If so, it means that instead of paying an excessive cost, the provider can grant customers to work with an agreed price at the times of highest demand in use.
Do you have service level agreements? So-called SLAs are important to clearly establish expectations for service levels. A good SLA developed in cooperation between customer and supplier ensures that both parties are benefited and protected.
Can services be configured to meet specific needs? If yes, the supplier can implement the product according to specific needs and not with a base model.
Do you offer a free trial period? This is valuable to check if the services meet the requirements of a company before signing a long-term contract.
Cloud computing has become very important in the business world; however, it is not a decision that should be taken lightly.
The interested party should thoroughly investigate the specific models and services and then assess which ones may be most useful for their needs and objectives, both in terms of operation and cost.
Oracle NetSuite cloud products not only meet the aforementioned points but transcend them by allowing all the information of a company to be managed in a fully integrated system.
