The Economics of Cloud Computing Addressing the Benefits of Infrastructure in the Cloud by Ted Alford [email protected] Gwen Morton [email protected] The Economics of Cloud Computing Addressing the Benefits of Infrastructure in the Cloud The federal government is embracing cloud computing as a achieve significant long-term cost savings through the means of reducing expenditures for information technology (IT) adoption of cloud computing technologies: infrastructure and services—trading up-front investment “Of the investments that will involve up-front costs for significant outyear savings. Booz Allen Hamilton has to be recouped in outyear savings, cloud-computing conducted an economic analysis to investigate the potential is a prime case in point. The federal government will savings of the federal plan, focusing on IT data centers and transform its Information Technology Infrastructure by using a proprietary cost model and extensive experience in virtualizing data centers, consolidating data centers cost and economic analysis of government IT programs. Our and operations, and ultimately adopting a cloud results generally confirm the government’s expectations of computing business model. Initial pilots conducted in significant cost savings; for a non-virtualized 1,000-server collaboration with federal agencies will serve as test data center, the benefit-to-cost ratios (BCR) in the study beds to demonstrate capabilities, including appropriate reflected in this paper range from 5.7 to 15.4 (with BCRs security and privacy protection at or exceeding current for larger data centers ranging potentially as high as 25). best practices, developing standards, gathering data, Our analysis implies that, over a 13-year life cycle, the total and benchmarking costs and performance. The pilots cost of implementing and sustaining a cloud environment will evolve into migrations of major agency capabilities may be as much as two-thirds lower than maintaining a from agency computing platforms to base agency IT traditional, non-virtualized IT data center. Our study takes processes and data in the cloud. Expected savings in into consideration transition costs and life-cycle operations, the outyears, as more agencies reduce their costs of as well as migration schedules—which other studies hosting systems in their own data centers, should be usually ignore or treat incidentally—to arrive at BCRs that many times the original investment in this area.”2 reflect the realities of transitioning major IT activities and reveal what federal enterprises can expect to realize from The language in the budget makes three key points: (1) a transition to cloud computing. Other studies often focus up-front investment will be made in cloud computing, only on cost savings from hardware replacement and omit (2) long-term savings are expected, and (3) the savings some of these considerations, which may result in higher are expected to be significantly greater than the BCRs in a much shorter investment payback period that investment costs. does not, in our view, paint an accurate picture. An operating agency—the General Services Introduction Administration (GSA)—has been identified to focus the government efforts in cloud computing and to provide The President’s budget for fiscal year 2010 (FY10) a “storefront” where other government agencies can includes $75.8B in IT spending, which is a 7-percent obtain IT services. Initially, GSA will provide managed increase from FY09. Of this, at least $20B will be access to public cloud providers. Over time, private spent on IT infrastructure investments.1 The FY11 and hybrid cloud environments will be created to meet budget for IT is projected to be nearly $88B. The the IT needs of government agencies. government cannot maintain this spending trajectory and has actively sought ways to reduce IT costs. Booz Allen has created a detailed cost model that Most recently, the budget submitted to the Congress has capabilities for creating life-cycle cost (LCC) highlights opportunities for the federal government to estimates of public, private, and hybrid clouds. We used this model, and our extensive experience in 2 1 Figures from INPUT data for the FY10 President’s budget; of the $20B in expenditures President’s budget, FY10 (Analytical Perspectives). categorized as office automation and IT infrastructure spending, about $12.2 B is spent on major IT investments, with the remainder on non-majors. Additional expenditures on appli- cation-specific IT infrastructure are typically reported as part of individual IT investments. 1 economic analysis of IT programs, to arrive at a first- We developed a first-order economic analysis by order estimate of each of the three key points in the considering how agencies might migrate to a cloud- President’s budget. Overall, it appears likely that the based environment and what the costs and potential budget’s expectations can be met, but several factors savings might be under a variety of scenarios. could affect the overall degree of economic benefit. Specifically, given long-standing efforts to protect the privacy and security of the federal government’s data Economic Implications and systems, a key variable will be whether agencies Given the nearly $76B in planned FY10 IT seek savings by taking advantage of public clouds, expenditures, and current as well as projected by building their own private clouds, or by adopting a budgetary pressures, the Administration’s drive to hybrid approach. For simplicity, we focused only on seek long-term cost savings is readily understandable. infrastructure services. Software as a Service will be Yet despite some of the more enthusiastic claims of slower to materialize because most software companies return on investment made by various cloud computing are still struggling to define licensing practices and advocates, the government’s adoption of this new pricing models for virtual environments. Further, IT model warrants careful consideration of the broad consistent with OMB direction for past initiatives, we economic implications—both the potential long-term assume that migration decisions will be made at the benefits in terms of cost savings and avoidance and department or agency (rather than bureau) level in order the near-term costs and other impacts of a transition to aggregate demand and drive scale efficiencies. from the current environment. Factors such as the Next, we developed three high-level scenarios that number and rate of federal agencies adopting cloud represent potential migration paths. We assume the computing, the length of their transitions to cloud perceived sensitivity of an agency’s mission and data computing, and the cloud computing model (public, will drive its decisions on which path to follow, at least private, or hybrid) will all affect the total costs, for the foreseeable future. The three scenarios are as potential benefits, and time required for the expected follows: benefits to offset the investment costs. Over the past 5 years, the government has made major Scenario 1: Public Cloud Adopters efforts to move toward shared services in other areas, Definition: Department or agency migrates its IT such as financial management, with mixed success. infrastructure to an existing public cloud. For example, although some smaller agencies have Key Agency Characteristic: Relatively low level of indeed migrated to shared services providers, larger mission, bureau, or program-specific sensitivities; agencies have generally continued to maintain their these agencies may be the most likely early own solutions. Overall, progress has been slower than adopters of cloud computing. originally envisioned, highlighting the need for policy guidance and coordination. Examples: Department of Commerce, Department of Labor, Environmental Protection Agency, Department To explore the potential economic and budgetary of the Interior, Department of Transportation, Small implications of a movement to adopt cloud computing, Business Association, other small or independent we drew on our experience with individual agencies and agencies (e.g., National Archives, Army Corps of bureaus that have virtualized their IT infrastructure, as Engineers, Smithsonian). well as lessons learned from shared services initiatives led by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Assumptions: Transition to the new cloud over the last several years. environment will occur steadily over 3 years; workload remains constant (i.e., no increase in capacity demand). 2 Scenario 2: Hybrid Cloud Adopters of Defense, GSA (i.e., community cloud), financial Definition: Department or agency builds a private cloud regulatory agencies (e.g., Federal Reserve Banks, solution to handle the majority of its IT workload but Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Deposit also uses a public cloud solution to provide “surge” Insurance Corporation). support and/or support for low-sensitivity applications. Assumptions: Transition to the new cloud environment Key Agency Characteristic: Bureau or program-specific will occur steadily over 3 years; existing facilities payment and/or privacy sensitivities; because of the will be used (i.e., no new investment is required in inherent complexity of this scenario, these agencies physical facilities); workload remains constant (i.e., no are more likely to be part of the “second wave” of increase in capacity demand). cloud adopters. To determine the potential aggregate costs and savings Examples: Department of Agriculture, Department across the federal government,