AWS Serverless architectures and server-based solutions have their own costs, and today we will show you how to save your company money using AWS. First, we need to see how these solutions differ from each other.
In the first case, we have on-premise solutions, maintained by you as a business owner. It needs to be designed, built and kept up by your company 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This means all the costs related to energy, network and maintenance teams are going to be provided and managed by your business. Even using a VPS, you will still have the costs of the infrastructure as your own.
And then you have the AWS solution. AWS provides the entire infrastructure you will need to start your application, as well as expert personnel capable of maintaining it up all the time. You only need to pay for what you are going to use, allowing your business to scale up or down depending on how your business flows. Long gone are the fixed server and storage costs which prove to be either a costly overspend when traffic is low or an under-resourced purchase which means you cannot accommodate the traffic coming in. A nightmare for cost savings and scalability.
Now that we have an overview of the scenario, let's take a look at some points and how each of the solutions above help your business.
Time planning your infrastructure
AWS and server-based solutions are completely different in this aspect. When using your own servers, you will need to think about maintaining a server on your own, including energy, devices and maintenance teams, whilst in AWS the entire infrastructure is already running and prepared to run your application, with a variety of web services at your disposal. This means you will take some time with the structural phase using your own servers and then the application itself, whilst in AWS you just need to think about what services you are going to use for the app. As everyone says: "Time is money!"
Personnel
Personnel to maintain your application running is very important: it needs to be up whenever your clients need it. To do so using your own servers, you will need to pay IT maintenance staff to make sure the server is running and operational at all times. Amazon already has their expert maintenance team there to make sure their services are up at all times ensuring that your business is live and ready to use by your end user.
Usage time
The amount you are going to pay is very different for each of the solutions. With servers it is your duty to ensure users are going to be able to access your application any time they want. This means you need to pay for the server to be up at all times whether you have traffic or not. On AWS it is completely different, you pay as you go, meaning that you are only paying for the usage your application is getting. AWS will always be up, so your users will be able to access your application whenever they want.
Risk
Buying a server on your own is not cheap; you need to build an entire infrastructure and maintain it. If for some reason your application is not an immediate success, you will still need to pay for the entire infrastructure you have built for it. On AWS, you are only paying for what you and your end-users are spending on resources. Also, AWS has its Free Tier, offering a great amount of resources in multiple services for free for one year. This can help you reduce the cost of your application in the beginning, and one year is a great amount of time to establish yourself in the market with lower prices due to AWS discounts.
Scalability
This factor is very important when you plan your application. Sometimes the initial server project is not enough for your application, and you will have to expand it. This means additional costs, and in some cases those resources you are going to pay in advance are not used for some time. You always need to have exceeding processing power and database, otherwise your application will potentially crash, leaving a bad user experience. On the other hand, the AWS services are going to scale as you need, meaning you do not need to have exceeding resources to make sure your application is running smoothly. Also, if your application is already established and you are sure it is going to use a certain amount of resources per month, you can reserve resources in the AWS cloud, paying less than on-demand pricing.
Those are some of the most notable differences between handling the servers on your own and going serverless. It is also nice to know that AWS has a "Pay less by using more" policy, meaning if you use large amounts of resources, each individual unit will be cheaper, as a package. We hope those tips will help you save your money, and if you want to go serverless and enjoy all those benefits, contact us and we will make it happen!
