Colocation vs Cloud: 3-Year TCO Calculator
Compare the total cost of colocation versus public cloud for your workload over three years. All assumptions are shown and adjustable. Figures are illustrative industry estimates, not quotes.
Your workload
~4 racks at 5 kW average density
Will be estimated from IT load using industry cost ratio
All assumptions are adjustable. Defaults are industry estimates. Click Reset to restore a default.
3-year comparison
£92,592
Colocation saving over 3 years
30%
Lower cost with colocation
1
Breakeven month
Get your full results
Enter your details to see the complete cost breakdown, monthly comparison, and interpretation.
Figures are illustrative industry estimates. All assumptions are adjustable above. This tool does not constitute financial or procurement advice.
How to read the results
The calculator compares the three-year total cost of ownership (TCO) for a colocation deployment against the equivalent cloud spend. Colocation costs include power and space, connectivity, remote hands, and amortised hardware capital expenditure. Cloud costs are either based on your current monthly spend (projected forward with a 5% annual cost increase) or estimated from your IT load.
The comparison does not include every possible cost in either model. Items such as in-house IT staff, software licensing, and data transfer costs vary significantly by organisation and should be modelled separately. The purpose of this tool is to give a directional comparison that frames the business case, not a final procurement number.
If the results are close, small changes in assumptions can swing the outcome. Adjusting the hardware capex per rack, the connectivity cost, or the cloud cost growth rate will show you how sensitive the comparison is to those variables. The most important inputs to get right are IT load (kW) and your actual current cloud spend.
See the colocation vs cloud guide for a more detailed explanation of the cost model and what to consider when moving infrastructure from cloud to colocation.