Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), the organization that puts out Harvard Business Review,  needed to adjust to the era of digital media and find its space in the cloud.  This, according to a recent article in TechTarget, about the organization’s presentation at the recent Interop trade show held in Las Vegas.

The most surprising findings were those of the cost benefits of cloud computing.  “Today, the project costs HBP double what it expects to spend long-term: approximately $30,000 for SunGard hosting services and $25,000 for AWS, added to its relatively recent hardware upgrade, including to Cisco Systems’ FlexPod. But Griffin estimates that in two or three years project cost will be reduced to half of what it is today.”

This is a common report for those who are implementing and/or leveraging cloud computing technology and public providers.  Largely, this is a learning curve as we move through our first cloud computing projects, and thus make some bad calls and misjudgments.

The value of cloud computing should be considered over at least 3 years, preferably 5 years.  Indeed, there will be an uptick in costs as we implement the technology, and work around the inevitable issues.  The idea is to get to a state where the operational costs are lower.  Most important, the solution needs to leave us with much more business agility than before.  The ability to move the IT resources to meet the needs of the business is where the true value lies in this technology.