This is a useful little tip that could have saved multiple companies I have worked with lots of money, particularly at the beginning of a migration or evaluation of a new cloud service project.
So you have done an initial proof of concept, you’ve done a check with Gartner to see whether everything fits your needs before taking on a cloud service, and then you start to talk to the vendor about money. The salesman then offers you an amazing deal if you spend X amount of money or pre buy a large chunk of services at a huge discount.
Before you make that commitment, think of two things:
- A lot of the cloud services have an expiry time on them. So say they give you a 2 for 1 offer of you spend £1 million this year, and you end up with £2 million worth of services. But originally you were hoping or planning to spend only £500,000 on services and only have the people allocated to work at that speed, now you have 4 times the amount and only a year to spend them, else they will go to waste, Eeek.
- We all work as if our projects are going to succeed, and we all behave as if they’re a 100% sure thing. But we must when making responsible decisions with other people’s money, think of what happens if the project gets stopped or cancelled or otherwise is prevented from getting over the line. In that case, what would you say to the finance people who ask “Hang on a minute, you’ve spent a million pounds worth of services what are we going to do with that now?.”
Conclusion
The cloud is a beautiful world and offers so many amazing things. but a vendor salesman is still a salesman. They are ultimately on the vendors side, not yours. Think of your client / employer and spend the money they have put in your care responsibly.