Why Cloud Cost Optimization Should Be a Business Priority

Cloud is undoubtedly a game-changer for organizations worldwide. It helps increase business agility, boost flexibility & improve performance. With growth comes challenges. As more enterprises move workloads to the CloudCloud, one of these enterprises’ significant issues is the sting of cost. The latest Forrester Research shows that Public Cloud infrastructure is expected to grow by 35% in 2021 and is valued at $120 billion.

Although CloudCloud is one of the fastest-growing IT segments, the more significant spending equates to a greater burden for CIOs to allocate budgets wisely. According to RightScale 2019 Cloud Report, Cloud spending, and governance are amongst the top challenges enterprises face. The lack of expertise and authority in cloud usage are other challenges many SMBs face.

In this blog, you will read – 

• Cloud Cost Containment Challenges
• The factors that contribute to the surging cloud costs
• Cloud Cost Optimization Best Practices [2021]
• Advantages and Benefits of Cloud Cost Management
• Going Serverless is the New Cloud

Cloud Cost Containment Challenges

Moving workloads to the CloudCloud has dramatically improved operational efficiencies and collaboration for many enterprises, but it has also proven costly. As per the latest IDC survey in 2020 on CloudCloud, apart from facing data privacy & security challenges, controlling the rising cloud costs is soon becoming one of the top challenges for enterprises.  According to IDC Cloud Survey Report 2020,

* Average Cloud spending by enterprises has risen by 59% as compared to 2018
* 55%, i.e., more than half of the enterprises use multiple public clouds
* In 2021, almost 39% of the revenues are dedicated to cloud costs

The factors that contribute to the surging cloud costs are : 

· Virtual machine instances
· Storage
· Network traffic
· Memory
· Web services & software licenses
· Lack of cloud management training & support
· Cloud management expertise

Cloud Cost Optimization Best Practices [2021]: 

Implementing a sound cloud cost management strategy paves the way for enterprises to plan for future costs. For organizations that use multi-cloud combinations, it is important to practice effective multi-cloud cost management plans that include all the public cloud account providers into account.

Tackle lack of resources/expertise smartly:

To get maximum benefits out of the CloudCloud without any collateral damages, enterprises must stay on top of the knowledge base & hire experts who have the proper skill set and can ensure smooth operability.

Rightsizing: 

Be very sure of the cloud storage that you choose. Ensure that it aligns well and is the right fit for your organization\’s needs.

Automatic Scaling: 

This provides freedom to organizations & helps them to be upscale or downsize as per the requirement to achieve maximum cloud utilization every time.

Scheduled Maintenance: 

Not all instances need to be run 24/7. Having a periodic intervention in scheduled maintenance, .ie, shutting down non-essential instances during the weekend, overnight, or when not in use, can significantly contribute to cloud cost management.

Compliance & Governance:

It is necessary to control the cloud chaos by communicating how to manage CloudCloud & use them effectively. Cloud governance requires an apparent behavioral change across organizations & obliging to lose control to upkeep the infrastructure in place. Process documentation on who can create what resources must utilize is essential to manage this cloud chaos.

Advantages and Benefits of Cloud Cost Management

One of the most obvious advantages of cloud cost management is decreased costs. Enterprises planning to optimize costs can ensure they don’t overspend on unused resources. This approach allows enterprises to adopt efficient usage and follow automatic scaling & load balancing.

By prioritizing Cloud cost optimization, enterprises can control costs, practice good governance, and stay competitive. Organizations must see cloud costs as beyond simple cost control. An effective cloud cost strategy helps businesses plan for the future and more efficiently forecast cost and resource needs.

While businesses focus on reducing overall spending during the pandemic, optimizing Cloud spending is worth visiting. Now is the time to analyze and establish a central group that takes care of the Cloud, pays primarily & provides agile ways of tackling the spending.

Going Serverless is the New Cloud

Going serverless is touted as the successor of Cloud. Derek Swanson, chief technology officer of Needham, Mass.-based Silk states, “Cloud storage waste is the most important problem to be tackled. The vendors who use & manage CloudCloud want to remain relevant to the rapidly growing cloud computing market. This gives rise to a new operating paradigm that requires new platforms and tools. Cloud data platform enables companies to adopt a hybrid Cloud. Serverless is the next evolution from monolithic application architecture after service-oriented architecture and microservices architectures,” he said.