Calculating the Cloud: Determining the True Cost of Hosting Servers and Storage in the Cloud

In an effort to assess the value of hosting servers in the cloud, Dartmouth College Computing Services initiated a study to determine the true cost of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings. The study resulted in two useful decision-making tools: "thresholds" for bandwidth, storage capacity, processing power, and usage patterns; and a "decision-tree" that incorporates the thresholds along with other factors such as risk and service-level requirements to help IT staff determine whether it's more cost effective to host a server in the cloud or keep it in house.