How to Use This Calculator:

1. Analysis Period: Enter the number of years you want to compare costs over (e.g., 3 or 5 years).
2. On-Premises Costs: Estimate your current or projected *annual* costs if you were to stay on-premises.
   • Initial Hardware/Software: Enter the total upfront cost for servers, storage, networking, and major software licenses.
   • Hardware Refresh Cycle: How many years until you typically replace this hardware/software? (Used for amortization).
   • Annual IT Labor: Cost for staff managing/maintaining the on-prem infrastructure.
   • Annual Power/Cooling/Space: Estimated yearly cost for server room utilities and space.
   • Other Annual Costs: Include support contracts, recurring software licenses, etc.
3. Cloud Costs: Estimate your projected costs associated with moving to and operating in the cloud.
   • One-Time Migration Cost: Estimated cost for the project to move applications and data (planning, labor, potential parallel run costs).
   • Estimated Annual Cloud Subscription: Yearly cost for cloud services (VMs, storage, basic networking, PaaS).
   • Estimated Annual Cloud Management Labor: Cost for staff or managed services provider to manage the cloud environment (often different skills/time than on-prem).
   • Estimated Annual Cloud Support Plan: Cost for the cloud provider's support plan (e.g., AWS Business Support, Azure Standard/ProDirect).
4. (Optional) Annual Productivity/Uptime Gains: Estimate the yearly financial benefit from factors like reduced downtime, faster deployments, or improved employee productivity enabled by the cloud.
5. Calculate: Click the "Calculate ROI" button to see the comparison.