Winning the LIMS Hosting Budget Battle: Comparing Cloud, SaaS, and On-Premises Costs

In today's competitive lab environment, a LIMS is indispensable. A LIMS implementation is often a complex project that can very easily go awry if all pieces of the project are not properly budgeted and accounted for. That budget is often a very large number, which should cover everything involved in deploying a powerful software system. That includes the critical choice of hosting model. The hosting model should be decided upon and approved prior to selecting a LIMS, because making that decision later in the process could stall your project.

In this blog post, we’re going to discuss the budgeting considerations for on-premises, cloud (including private cloud), and software as a service (SaaS) hosting models, from the initial costs through the long-term cost of ownership. Regardless of the hosting model, there will be some infrastructure costs. These costs often are unaccounted for when developing an appropriate LIMS implementation budget. Keeping this in mind should help you know what to ask vendors about in your next LIMS implementation or upgrade project. It will also prepare you for the inevitable questions from your organization’s finance team when making the budget request.

We’ll start with an overview of the common hosting models and their initial costs. When you evaluate these options, it's crucial to consider the long-term total cost of ownership (TCO). TCO extends beyond the initial purchase price and implementation costs to include all direct and indirect costs over the system's lifespan.