In this report Evaluator Group will test the validity of that assumption with a TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) model analyzing a hyperconverged appliance solution from SimpliVity and a comparable cloud service from Amazon Web Services (AWS).  The Cloud, once a radical idea in IT, is now mainstream. Whether it’s email, backup or file sharing, most consumers probably use a cloud service or two. Similarly, most IT professionals are familiar with cloud service providers such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft Azure, and many companies have moved at least some of their information technology processes into the cloud. In fact, the cloud has become so popular it’s easy to assume that running IT applications on-premises is not cost competitive with a cloud-based service.