CloudPhysics, an analytics and management platform provider, announced today its Cost Calculator for Private Cloud featuring the Cloud Comparison tool. This tool analyzes data within on-premises virtual machines and private clouds to automate the process of determining the cost of switching to a public cloud, specifically Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

“Most organizations are faced with the question: Would it save money to run our services in the cloud (private or public), which is very difficult to get a complete answer for,” says Chris Schin, VP of product and engineering with CloudPhysics. “We can estimate what you can save and where by switching specific workloads from a private cloud to a public cloud.”

Offered in software-as-a-service (SaaS) form, the Cost Calculator compares a virtual machine’s resources, such as CPU and storage, with the amount it actually requires to perform its functions, optimizing its use and cost.

Because many virtual machines are over-provisioned with resources, this can help customers save costs per workload, whether on-premises or in the cloud.

The calculator also allows users to create scenarios that compare their private cloud costs versus public cloud estimates with utilization levels at peak 95th and 99th percentiles. They can then accurately determine what these workloads cost to operate in the public cloud at those respective levels.

However, one of the downsides of this product is that it cannot analyze costs when examining a transition from a public cloud to a private cloud, because data is only gathered within private clouds. Although the Cost Calculator has filtering capabilities that are are specific to virtual machines, data centers, compute clusters, or storage clusters, CloudPhysics is still working on adding applications and other workloads to the filtering capabilities.

Based in Santa Clara, California, CloudPhysics has raised $27 million in three rounds since its launch in 2011 backed by Mayfield, KPCB, and Icon Ventures. The Cost Calculator for Private Cloud is available for IT end users or for vendors and their customers.