How much does it really cost to buy more powerful cloud compute resources for development work? A lot less than you think. By Natalie Somersall.
The cost of hardware is one of the most common objections to providing more powerful computing resources to development teams—and that’s regardless of whether you’re talking about physical hardware in racks, managed cloud providers, or a software-as-a-service based (SaaS) compute resource. Paying for compute resources is an easy cost to “feel” as a business, especially if it’s a recurring operating expense for a managed cloud provider or SaaS solution.
The article details:
- Testing build times vs. cost by core size on compute resources
- How much slow build times cost companies
- How much context switching costs companies
When you ask a developer whether they’d prefer more or less powerful hardware, the answer is almost always the same: they want more powerful hardware. It’s cheaper—and less frustrating for your developers—to pay more for better hardware to keep your team on track.
In this case, spending an extra $4-5 on build compute saves about $40 per build for an individual developer, or a little over $200 per build for a team of five, and the frustration of switching tasks with a productivity cost of about an hour. That’s not nothing. Of course, spending that extra $4-5 at scale can quickly compound—but so can the cost of sunk productivity. Interesting read!
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