Tag Archives: software
Cloud Computing Shifts the TCO Discussion
The cloud computing model can help companies conserve cash and focus limited resources on the business, instead of reacting to IT infrastructure-related fire drills. In the cloud computing model, vendors provide Web-based access to applications as a service, through a subscription pricing model. This eliminates the need for customers to buy, deploy and manage IT infrastructure and solutions. Vendors take responsibility for everything: the servers, storage, operating system, database, business software, updates, migration, power and cooling, data center space, and support services. As a result, cloud computing shifts the IT burden from the customer to the cloud computing application vendor.
Cloud computing vendors can provide these benefits because they’ve built their solutions as Web-based services from the ground up. Instead of building their solutions to run in-house, as a separate, individual instances for each customer, they architect their solutions for a one-to-many, or multi-tenant model. This means that they can run thousands of customers on a single instance of the database and application software. By optimising their business solutions for this shared environment, they can achieve efficiencies throughout the solution lifecycle that would be difficult for on-premise vendors to achieve.
Lean and mean IT
Headquartered in Slovakia, the U.S. division of this security software firm has grown from 1 to 135 employees over the past 10 years. The division had began by using multiple brands of packaged software for accounting, contact management and reporting functions. But as it grew, the organisation wanted tighter integration across functions, better reporting, and an easier way to provide access to an increasing number of remote employees. It also wanted to keep upfront capital and ongoing support costs low. “The fact that there was little or no infrastructure or internal support required drove us to a software-as-service solution,” according the firm’s Business Systems Director. Since deploying NetSuite in 2006, the company has kept IT “lean and mean”, and “the single system, real-time view of customers helps our sales and support teams to offer better service to customers”.
Why does TCO matter?
In the IT industry, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is used to calculate the total cost of purchasing (or in the case of cloud computing, subscribing to), and of operating a technology solution over its useful life. TCO provides a realistic and holistic measure of the long-term costs required to acquire and operate technology solutions. Return on investment (ROI) is another method to evaluate and prioritise technology investments in a company. This measure is typically used to compare investments that uncover new top line revenue and growth opportunities. However, ROI tends to be more subjective in nature than TCO, because ROI looks at business benefits, which often cannot be measured as objectively as costs.
Hurwitz & Associates views TCO as a preferred method to compare technology investments when two solutions provide roughly equivalent benefits over the solution lifecycle, but have different types of costs associated with acquisition, maintenance and operation. For these reasons, a TCO comparison offers a more tangible assessment of the total costs involved in deploying cloud-based SaaS and on-premise business solutions.
Cloud Computing Shifts the TCO Discussion
The cloud computing model can help companies conserve cash and focus limited resources on the business, instead of reacting to IT infrastructure-related fire drills. In the cloud computing model, vendors provide Web-based access to applications as a service, through a subscription pricing model. This eliminates the need for customers to buy, deploy and manage IT infrastructure and solutions. Vendors take responsibility for everything: the servers, storage, operating system, database, business software, updates, migration, power and cooling, data center space, and support services. As a result, cloud computing shifts the IT burden from the customer to the cloud computing application vendor.
Cloud computing vendors can provide these benefits because they’ve built their solutions as Web-based services from the ground up. Instead of building their solutions to run in-house, as a separate, individual instances for each customer, they architect their solutions for a one-to-many, or multi-tenant model. This means that they can run thousands of customers on a single instance of the database and application software. By optimising their business solutions for this shared environment, they can achieve efficiencies throughout the solution lifecycle that would be difficult for on-premise vendors to achieve.
Lean and mean IT
Headquartered in Slovakia, the U.S. division of this security software firm has grown from 1 to 135 employees over the past 10 years. The division had began by using multiple brands of packaged software for accounting, contact management and reporting functions. But as it grew, the organisation wanted tighter integration across functions, better reporting, and an easier way to provide access to an increasing number of remote employees. It also wanted to keep upfront capital and ongoing support costs low. “The fact that there was little or no infrastructure or internal support required drove us to a software-as-service solution,” according the firm’s Business Systems Director. Since deploying NetSuite in 2006, the company has kept IT “lean and mean”, and “the single system, real-time view of customers helps our sales and support teams to offer better service to customers”.
Why does TCO matter?
In the IT industry, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is used to calculate the total cost of purchasing (or in the case of cloud computing, subscribing to), and of operating a technology solution over its useful life. TCO provides a realistic and holistic measure of the long-term costs required to acquire and operate technology solutions. Return on investment (ROI) is another method to evaluate and prioritise technology investments in a company. This measure is typically used to compare investments that uncover new top line revenue and growth opportunities. However, ROI tends to be more subjective in nature than TCO, because ROI looks at business benefits, which often cannot be measured as objectively as costs.
Hurwitz & Associates views TCO as a preferred method to compare technology investments when two solutions provide roughly equivalent benefits over the solution lifecycle, but have different types of costs associated with acquisition, maintenance and operation. For these reasons, a TCO comparison offers a more tangible assessment of the total costs involved in deploying cloud-based SaaS and on-premise business solutions.
Computer Optimization – Tips on how to Tune-up Your Computer in a few Easy Steps
A slow and sluggish computer might be highly irritating and difficult, which is why implementing successful computer optimization approaches is vital. Slow performance of your computer can lead to decreased efficiency, which can even result in monetary loss in some situations. Besides from increasing MEMORY size and maintaining a high level of security ecosystem for your laptop, there are a few simple techniques that a user can utilize to help keep the performance of a computer at an optimal degree.
Listed below are few such quick but effective steps that one can perform for laptop or computer optimization:
Cleaning up the PC Registry – The registry of any computer is a huge database with info and data about your configuration and features of this PC system. Presence of unwanted or maybe incorrect entries in the registry can lead to bugs or errors, which will subsequently make the system slow and also begin giving errors often. There are some great registry cleaning tools available in computer stores together with online, that one may purchase or sometimes download totally free. These software programs are generally very helpful in repairing bugs or errors, making sure of that the registry is healthy and free of corrupted or redundant records. This is one of the most effective computer optimization methods.
Disk Defragmenter – Fragmented files decrease the performance of the computer since the computer has to search for all of the file’s elements in the complete hard disk. When software programs and files are put into the computer, they are often split into pieces of data that are placed next to each other for quicker access in addition to retrieval. However, as the number of files and programs in the PC keep growing along with usage, the computer saves the updates inside the largest space available on the hard disk. This results in fragmented files which are stored in distributed spots, leading to slow performance from the PC. The Disk Defragmenter tool places all related data files together in correct order, which means that the device will now take less timeframe to find and track down the searched file.
Disk Cleanup – Cleaning the disk is like clearing the mess in a space or a cabinet. It removes all the temporary files which are created and stored if the user looks at websites or works on files in numerous programs. These programs can contain software like Microsoft Word and Excel. Over time, the number of short-lived files increases, reducing the computers efficiency substantially. The Disk Cleanup program facilitates to get the computer rid of most of these unnecessary files, thus helping in entire computer optimization.
Webpage history size reduction – Firefox or other browsers store visited website pages and other Internet browsing information (for instance pictures, videos etc) on the PC. Although it might be good to keep the web history for day or two within the computer, keeping more than a weeks history seriously isn’t required and thus ought to be removed from the personal computer. Too much data accumulated and stored from internet pages can slow down the actual computer’s performance. Reducing the size of website page history helps in computer system optimization.
Overall, taking care of the performance of one’s computer is not a tough activity. With good use with the above tools and techniques, computer optimization may be simple and hassle free.