We are beginning to tire of all the discussion of cloud computing’s “big picture.” As always in IT, the devil is in the details, and it’s the details we need. This is particularly true as we move to trying to estimate the real costs of what the big picture folks tell us is an inevitable move.

This “Feet on the Ground” series of posts will therefore address the blanks in the cloud formula that you may be hesitating to fill in. We’ll start with how to estimate costs, and then dig deeper, into how to estimate bandwidth, storage, CPU and the costs of extra services offered by cloud vendors.