When a mid-sized accounting firm in Mississauga calls us, they usually lead with one question: "Is cloud really cheaper than what we have?" It's the right question — but it's often answered with vendor math that conveniently ignores the full cost of what they're comparing against.
So let's do this properly. Here is a straightforward total cost of ownership comparison for a 20-person SMB running traditional on-premises desktops versus a cloud desktop deployment — using figures we see regularly in the Canadian market.
The real cost of traditional IT
On-premises computing looks affordable on the surface. A business laptop costs $1,200–$1,800. A server costs $8,000–$15,000. You buy it, you own it. What's missing from that calculation is everything that happens after the purchase.
Hardware refresh cycles
Desktops and laptops have a 3–4 year useful life in a business environment. After that, performance degrades, warranty coverage expires, and security patches stop arriving. For a 20-person team with $1,500 average device cost, that's $10,000/year in hardware depreciation alone — before we count servers, networking gear, or UPS units.
IT labour
Every device needs to be imaged, patched, configured, and eventually decommissioned. For a business without dedicated IT staff, this falls on whoever is "good with computers." For businesses with an IT contractor, expect $100–$175/hour for on-site work. Our clients typically spend 3–6 hours per device per year on routine maintenance — patching, troubleshooting, software deployments. At 20 devices, that's 60–120 labour hours annually.
Downtime
Hardware failure is the most underestimated cost. When a laptop fails, the user is down for 1–3 days while a replacement is sourced, imaged, and configured. At an average fully-loaded employee cost of $50/hour, a single day of downtime costs $400 in lost productivity. Canadian SMBs we speak with experience 2–4 hardware failures per year across a 20-person team.
Security incidents
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security reported that ransomware attacks cost Canadian SMBs an average of $200,000 per incident when remediation, downtime, and ransom are factored in. Traditional desktop environments, where each device maintains its own local storage and software state, are significantly more exposed than centralised cloud environments.
The hidden number: Most traditional IT cost analyses capture hardware and software licensing, but miss labour, downtime, and the amortised risk of a security incident. When all four categories are included, the true cost is typically 2–3× the number that appears on the initial quote.
A full cost comparison: 20 users, 3 years
| Cost category | Traditional IT (3 yr) | Concero Cloud (3 yr) |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware (devices + server) | $42,000 | $0 – thin clients optional at $300/seat |
| Hardware refresh | $10,000 | $0 – included in subscription |
| IT labour (patching, support) | $18,000 | $3,600 – reduced helpdesk load |
| Downtime losses (est.) | $6,400 | $800 – near-zero hardware failure |
| Software licensing | $14,400 | $14,400 – Microsoft 365 equivalent |
| Security tooling | $7,200 | $0 – SOC II compliance included |
| Concero subscription (20 seats) | — | $28,800 ($40/seat/mo × 36 mo) |
| Total 3-year cost | $98,000 | $47,600 |
The numbers above use conservative estimates for traditional IT labour and downtime. In practice, businesses with aging infrastructure, high staff turnover, or remote workers tend to sit at the high end of those ranges — which pushes the traditional IT column above $120,000 over three years.
Beyond cost: what the numbers miss
Total cost of ownership is a useful framework, but it doesn't capture everything that matters to a growing SMB.
Scalability
Adding a new employee to a traditional environment means procuring a device, waiting for delivery, imaging it, and setting it up. With a cloud desktop, a new user account is provisioned in under an hour. For businesses hiring seasonally or scaling fast, this is a meaningful operational advantage.
Remote work readiness
A cloud desktop is accessible from any device with a browser. Employees working from home, on the road, or from a client site have the same full Windows environment they'd have in the office. Traditional desktops either require VPN with all its latency and complexity, or leave employees working on local machines that may not be fully patched or backed up.
Disaster recovery
Traditional on-premises environments require a separate investment in backup infrastructure and tested recovery procedures. Concero's platform includes daily backups with 99.9% uptime SLA as part of the base subscription. If a user's device is stolen or destroyed, they're back online from any computer within minutes.
Compliance
For businesses in financial services, healthcare, or legal services, data residency and security compliance are non-negotiable. Our Canadian data centres — located in Toronto and Vancouver — meet the requirements of PIPEDA and provincial equivalents. Traditional on-premises environments require significant additional investment to achieve equivalent compliance posture.
Is cloud right for your business?
Cloud desktops aren't the answer for every business. If your team relies on GPU-intensive local software (CAD, video rendering), if you have a single fixed location with a recent hardware refresh, or if your IT is already well-managed and cost-controlled, the numbers may not tip convincingly in cloud's favour — yet.
But for the businesses we see most often — professional services firms, distributors, remote teams, businesses with aging hardware or IT staff turnover — the comparison tends to land around 40–55% lower total cost of ownership over a three-year window, with meaningfully better security and flexibility included.
If you'd like to run these numbers against your own environment, we offer a free cost analysis as part of our consultation process. No commitment required — just a 30-minute call.
Get your own cost comparison
We'll run the numbers against your current setup and show you exactly what the switch would cost — and save.