Analysis of Total Cost of Ownership for Medium Scale Cloud Service Provider with emphasis on Technology and Security

Sammanfattning: Total cost of ownership is a great factor to consider when deciding to deploy cloud computing. The cost to own a data centre or run a data centre outweighs the thought of IT manager or owner of the business organisation.The research work is concerned with specifying the factors that sum the TCO for medium scale service providers with respect to technology and security. A valid analysis was made with respect to the cloud service providers expenses and how to reduce the cost of ownership.In this research work, a review of related articles was used from a wide source, reading through the abstract and overview of the articles to find its relevance to the subject. A further interview was conducted with two medium scale cloud service providers and one cloud user.In this study, an average calculation of the TCO was made and we implemented a proposed cost reduction method. We made a proposal on which and how to decide as to which cloud services users should deploy in terms of cost and security.We conclude that many articles have focused their TCO calculation on the building without making emphasis on the security. The security accumulates huge amount under hidden cost and this research work identified the hidden cost, made an average calculation and proffer a method of reducing the TCO.