Libor Bešenyi (CTO)

Let’s calculate the monthly costs of the application from the previous parts of the series. Before that, however, we did some tests so we could be sure that we understand the price list well (and it was good that we did it).

Simulation (Activity of users)

If you are lost in the price lists of cloud providers, you can try to simulate live operation. Of course, we need to know how our systems are used. It is clear from our simple example that there are two activities:

• Upload of pictures from a mobile device
• Viewing of already uploaded images via web interface

We will thus create model applications and we will try a few stress tests. Microsoft philosophy in a nutshell is as follows:

Whatever we send to the cloud is for free, we pay for the transfer of data out of the cloud

TEST 1: Upload (hybrid model)

Task: Let’s take volume of 100 gigabytes of data, which will be sent out via web services outside the cloud to the cloud storage

Expectation: According to the rules of Microsoft, this should be for free

Result: OK (upload ran free, only the use of resources in the repository is paid)

 TEST 2: Upload within the cloud

Task: We shall slightly modify the first test by placing the services into the cloud

Expectation: Exactly the same, it should be for free

Result: Error – Microsoft charged for this upload (exactly the same amount as a download - see test 3) ... we did not expect this.

We immediately thought that this is a classic mistake and PaaS service for Rest was registered in another region than storage, which would make sense and the payment would be expected:

We recommend using one region for all cloud services, otherwise the transfer between the clouds will be charged

However, we were disappointed. Both services were in the same region, therefore the rule that everything we send to the cloud is free does not fully apply.

Update 28/7 –After opening a ticket in the Azure billing centre and the following consultation with Microsoft, we can confirm that Microsoft has acknowledged the mistake and as of 28 July 2016, this fee is not charged, as confirmed by repeating the same test.

TEST 3: Download (hybrid model)

Task: We will download (View) 100 gigabytes of data stored in the cloud

Expectation: Expected billing

Vysledok: OK (billing is 7€/100GB)

TEST 4: Download within the cloud

After the bad experience with test one and not knowing how and what Microsoft actually charges, we did a test to see whether an upload within a cloud will be charged twice.

Task: Edit test 3 so that Rest application sits within the cloud

Expectation: Expected billing as well as in test 3 (1x upload when it passes two nodes in the cloud)

Result: OK (billing is 7€/100GB)

Price

Prices collected from previous chapters:

Conclusion

If it appears that we are no table to answer some questions due to calculation of ROI, how can we be able to calculate the ROI of the project?

Warning: most prices of projects in the companies count with the cost for investment and the maintenance is dissolved in other expenses of the company.

The price for services is then distorted and it is difficult to consider the profitability of product revenues from this segment. These small steps in the cloud will in future help us to do more extensive steps in business strategy or processes (BPaaS / big data).