Cloud Digital Leader Practice Question: Comparing the total cost of keeping its data…

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  Only the cost of the servers themselves, since other costs are shared across the organization

  Why it's wrong here

  This answer is wrong because it overlooks that servers consume facility resources such as power, cooling, physical space, and security. Even if these costs appear 'shared' across the organization, they are real incremental costs that must be allocated to the data center to compute an apples-to-apples TCO against cloud. Excluding them systematically understates on-premises costs and skews the comparison.

• ✓

  Physical space/rent, electricity (for servers and cooling), cooling system maintenance, physical security, and fire suppression — all of which are real costs borne by the organization for operating its own data center

  Why this is correct

  This is the complete set of facility costs. Power is often the largest ongoing cost after staff. Cooling typically adds 30-50% to the power cost of the IT equipment itself. Physical security and fire suppression add further costs. All must be included for an accurate TCO comparison against cloud.

• ✗

  Internet connectivity costs only, since data centers require high-bandwidth connections

  Why it's wrong here

  Internet connectivity is only one component of data center facility costs, and often not the dominant one. Electricity for powering servers and cooling equipment typically exceeds bandwidth spend by a wide margin, and cooling alone can add 30–50% to IT power costs, along with expenses for physical security, space, and fire suppression. A TCO that isolates only connectivity ignores these major cost drivers and underestimates the true cost of running a private data center.

• ✗

  Data center facility costs do not need to be included since they are fixed costs that don't change whether servers are present or not

  Why it's wrong here

  Facility costs are not sunk costs irrelevant to the comparison. Freeing data center space by moving to cloud can allow facilities to be reduced, subleased, or eliminated — real savings. Fixed costs must be included in TCO to determine whether moving to cloud creates net savings.

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