How well are you really controlling cloud spend?
During the second quarter in 2020, the global enterprise invested $34.6 billion in the cloud—an 11% jump from the previous quarter—a 30% increase from the same quarter last year. But what isn’t reported is the dollar amount wasted due to siloes, limited visibility, and planning that doesn’t go deep enough.
“Given the cost pressures many companies find themselves under because of the current economic environment, it is critical they employ a strategy for cloud investment that provides the best service to their organizations, while optimizing both their cloud infrastructure and corresponding spend.”
— Brandon Henning, Chief Product Officer, Tangoe
Staying in careful control of cloud spend is mission-critical to reducing waste and right-sizing your cloud environment. And limiting waste goes past one basic audit. Harnessing your cloud spend for maximum value is an ongoing initiative that mandates a mix of the right technologies, best practices, and operations.
“A combination of technology, operations and practices can help reduce spending waste. Gaining control over cloud spend can’t be a one-time effort.”
— Jimmy Pham, Principal, Booz Alen Hamilton
Read on for best practices to keep you in control of your cloud spend:
1. Stop overprovisioning.
We know, it sounds obvious, but overprovisioning infrastructure services—from VMs that aren’t in use to always-on non-production environments is relevant on the cloud. Another consideration is ensuring that your organization isn’t overprovisioning Microsoft 365 licenses that can flex to right-size as your organization grows or cuts back.
2. Maintain visibility.
Closely and deliberately monitoring cloud applications and workloads and making adjustments based on current and future business requirements is a proven method to gaining control over cloud spend. It’s important to have a complete picture of your organization’s activity on the cloud so you can continue to optimize.
Automated cloud management and monitoring tools and services are critical to identifying potential areas for waste. Using a multi-cloud management platform and a third-party cloud operations organization can give your organization deeper visibility and actionable solutions.
3. Don’t rush your cloud strategy.
Sustainable, long-term value requires a methodical, purposeful, and consistent approach to cloud adoption. With the increasing demands on IT teams and board room conversations about digital transformation, it’s easy to make quick calls on shifting enterprise solutions to the cloud. Don’t.
Being reactive instead of planning out a long-term, cohesive cloud strategy fuels the best possible outcomes.
Many organizations across the enterprise rushed critical services to the cloud to support a remote, connected workplace with minimal planning. It takes time, planning, and subject matter experts to plan a cloud migration or deployment that promotes better business performance and lower cloud spend.
Take control over cloud spend with deeper insights.
Let’s talk.
Our cloud experts are here to help you unleash maximum value and performance on the cloud from monitoring your environment to assessing license provisioning. Learn how our subject matter experts can guide you in right-sizing your environment and reducing cloud costs.
