Licensing model and cloud model might help to reduce the initial setup cost of a certain technology. As at setting up an on-premise environment and buying server license implies a huge cost and setup time, buying cloud pro user license definitely means a reduction in setup time and cost. Certainly the situation is not so simple, as on the one hand a user license based model can be more expensive on with a given number of users, On the other hand the extension possibilities of a cloud model are usually more limited as with an on premise environment, meaning that the technology limit can be reached more easily.
Set up time and cost (before Q1): Set-up time and cost are definitely much faster on a cloud environment.
Effective agile development (between Q1 and Q2): considering most software as a service cloud environment, the provided services are usually much more limited as on the on premise versions. Cloud soft wares are much more 'boxed' products.
Architecture limit (after Q2): Architecture limit can be much more easily reached on a cloud software as a service solution. Hence if the limit once reached there is much less possibility to create some extensions, if there is at all the possibility to create extention.
As conclusion, a cloud based user license environment is certainly much faster and cheaper on a short run, however not necessarily the best choice on a long run.
Figure 1, Cloud versus On-Premise compared base on cost-use-case model.
