How a CA Firm Reduced Its IT Costs by Moving to Cloud

What the Local Server Setup Was Costing

A 7-person CA firm with offices in central India had been running Tally on a local server for four years. The server was a mid-range machine purchased in 2020, now showing its age: sluggish during GST filing weeks when all six staff needed Tally access simultaneously, requiring restarts 2–3 times per month, and creating anxiety every time power fluctuated during summer.

The full monthly cost of their local server, accurately counted: IT support contract Rs. 12,000/month (covering hardware maintenance, troubleshooting, and periodic updates), UPS battery replacement Rs. 8,000 amortised monthly, power cost for the server running 24/7 Rs. 2,200/month, and a share of the partner's time dealing with server issues — estimated at 6–8 hours per month at their opportunity cost. Total: approximately Rs. 28,000/month in real costs, not counting the performance limitations and lack of remote access.

What the Cloud Migration Looked Like

The firm migrated to a managed Windows cloud server with 8 CPU cores, 16 GB RAM, and 150 GB NVMe SSD — configured for 6 concurrent Tally users. Migration took 48 hours over a Saturday-Sunday. All company files, TDL customisations, and user configurations transferred completely. Monday morning: all staff connected via Remote Desktop and worked normally.

The monthly cost after migration: a flat managed cloud plan covering Windows Server, NVMe storage, daily backups, firewall, OS management, and 24/7 support. See current plan pricing.

What Changed After Migration?

Performance: Report generation that took 20–35 seconds on the old server now completes in 3–6 seconds. The bottleneck was storage — the old server had a 7-year-old SATA SSD that had degraded significantly. NVMe on the cloud server eliminated this completely.

Remote access: Partners can review client work from home in the evenings. Juniors access Tally from client premises without carrying data. Two partners who previously needed to be physically in the office for year-end reviews now do them from wherever they are.

Reliability: In the first six months after migration, zero unplanned downtime. The cloud server is maintained by professionals. Nobody restarts it because Tally is acting strangely at 4 PM on a deadline day.

Cost: Monthly IT expenditure dropped from approximately Rs. 28,000 to the flat managed cloud plan rate — a saving of over Rs. 2 lakh annually.

What Was the Total Migration Cost?

Migration was included as part of the first month's plan — no additional migration fee. The firm's total incremental cost to migrate was the time investment of the IT team (minimal — under 4 hours of internal coordination) and one brief period of testing on the Sunday before cutover.

What Would This Look Like for Your Firm?

The cost savings and performance improvements described above are representative of what firms with ageing local servers typically experience after cloud migration. The specific numbers will vary based on your current setup, user count, and server specifications.

The honest caveat: if your current local server is recent and well-maintained, the cost difference will be smaller. If it is 4+ years old and consuming significant IT support time, the difference will likely be larger.

M A Global Network can assess your current setup and provide a realistic cost comparison. Talk to our team for an honest evaluation of whether cloud migration makes financial sense for your firm. View current plan pricing here.