We are aware of the fact that a key advantage of cloud computing is its ability to fit infrastructure to the requirements of an organization, i.e. pay only for what you use. With this formula for cost advantage, cloud computing is racing ahead as the preferred infrastructure of choice for companies ranging from startups to Fortune 50 companies. As Ed Anderson, Gartner Research Vice President sums it up, “Cloud-first strategies are the foundation for staying relevant in a fast-paced world. The market for cloud services has grown to such an extent that it is now a notable percentage of total IT spending, helping to create a new generation of start-ups and ‘born in the cloud’ providers.”
Because of its popularity, companies embrace the ‘lift & shift’ strategy, replicating their on-premises infrastructure. They then realize that they have not saved much and they wonder why they went to all this trouble.
Strategies to transform your business into the digital world
The method to experience cost savings with cloud computing is to watch out for some hidden pits such as over- provisioning, under-optimizing, or forgetting to turn off the ‘lights’. What this means is, lifting and shifting your data from on-premise to the cloud is only the very basic step in cloud computing. How you optimize cloud space will be the factor that will actually help to save money.
A couple of tips to ensure that your cloud is cost effective:
Firstly, it is important to keep a strict watch on billing, just as you would the electricity in your home. Public cloud service providers like AWS offer their tools such as Billing Dashboard, Billing reports and Cost Explorer to quickly identify trends. There are some external options to monitor cloud costs such as Cloudyn and Cloudhealth. These tools help you to calculate savings on a bill.
The fact is most organizations simply focus on scalability and elasticity. They looked to the cloud for faster infrastructure set up. However, the result is clutter and unorganized usage of the Cloud. To quote an example, when a project kicks off, the infrastructure, storage and software with licenses are assigned. However, more often than not, there may not be hundred percent utilization 24/7. Also as the project progresses, the project manager could fail to report to the infrastructure team, the need to reduce cloud resources. As the project ends the actual usage may be very different from what was originally planned. To summarize, enterprises waste nearly 40 percent of their cloud spend on inefficient use.
However, do enterprises have the manpower, bandwidth or the know-how to continuously monitor the cloud for optimal usage? This requires dedicated people who are technically evolved and therefore understand what is required from the cloud. It is only with their intervention that cloud can become truly cost effective.
Trigent’s cloud cost optimization services can help you reduce both current and ongoing cloud costs by identifying and eliminating waste.
With Trigent, you are assured of:
- Continuous optimization of cloud for cost and efficiency.
- Proactive cost monitoring with advanced alerts for cost control.
- Identify and uncover unused resources with 450+ pre-built checks.
- Helps in streamlining your current and projected cloud spend.
If you have already migrated to the cloud or in the process of migrating, get in touch with Trigent to maximize your cloud returns.
