There are many great reasons why one should consider going down the virtual infrastructure route but cost savings is not really one of them. The idea that virtual networks are cheaper than dedicated hardware is but an illusion.
Originally, infrastructure was deployed as software. But as organizations need more compute resources, there was also the need for bigger and beefier servers on which to deploy the solutions. This is known as vertical scalability. These days, horizontal scalability in the form of cloud computing is much more preferred. You pay as you grow and you compute resources according to the demand. The appeal of this setup is in the fact that it is easier and cheaper than traditional hardware-based scalability. The cost of additional licenses, integration, operational expenses and management are significantly lower on the cloud environment than on managed hosting servers.
One of the main reasons why people see cost savings in the cloud is because the costs of hardware - or the physical servers - are split amongst different organizations. You only pay a nominal hourly fee for the use of the hardware. This is because you share the cost usage of hardware across hundreds of other clients who are all looking to reduce their operating expenses.
However, when infrastructure starts getting virtualized, you don’t really share the costs of the solution or the cost of management. In many cases, you only get to share same costs for practically any other virtual image. You will also be forced to horizontally scale according to capacity limits. The provider will also set compute resources available.
In case you need more resources, as in when you’ve already achieved the highest configuration, it’s important to start scaling horizontally whether you want it or not.
At the end of the day, you don’t really share costs with other people. They are yours alone.