IDC: Amazon Web Services Use Yields 626% ROI

eWeek: A new report from IDC finds that some enterprises have seen tremendous savings by moving to the cloud. The report, which was commissioned by Amazon Web Services (AWS), found that the average return on investment after five years of using AWS was 626 percent. Companies saved an average of $2.5 million per application over that time period, and deploying and managing critical applications in the cloud saved about 70 percent versus in-house infrastructure. In addition the savings increased over time.

Also, although AWS has experienced some well-publicized downtime, the report says that most companies who used the cloud computing service actually increased their availability. “Our findings show that AWS has an outstanding track record regarding availability,” wrote IDC’s Stephen Hendrick. “However, service interruptions are inevitable regardless of whether applications are deployed on-premise, on AWS or elsewhere. To maximize the potential of cloud computing implementations, customers must evaluate the architecture of their applications. If availability is considered important, IDC recommends that organizations architect their applications across AWS Availability Zones in either active or passive ways that are commensurate with the level of availability.”