Automatic Scaling Can be Costly

The Cloud Conundrum: 5 Tips for Cloud Cost Optimisation
According to Luc Imbert, CPO at InterCloud, when cloud management’s hidden costs aren’t carefully considered, the impact can lead to wasted spending and reduced profitability

Global multinational businesses are increasingly leveraging the power of cloud computing to stay competitive and drive growth, but controlling cost remains crucial to its success. Businesses are increasingly relying on multiple cloud vendors to help them run their operations and provide scalable and flexible infrastructure. According to InterCloud, the complexity of managing these various platforms grows with this reliance, as does the likelihood of incurring new hidden costs and risks.

Research from McKinsey has shown that 80 percent of enterprises believe that managing cloud spend poses a challenge. How well these costs are managed can have a significant bearing on a company's productivity and profitability, particularly when embracing a multicloud strategy. According to Luc Imbert, CPO at InterCloud, when cloud management’s hidden costs aren’t carefully considered, the impact can quickly add up, resulting in wasted spending and reduced profitability.

Luc believes that to effectively manage cloud infrastructure, businesses must have a thorough understanding and full transparency of all costs associated with their cloud environment.

Get your sizing right
Direct costs associated with cloud services can include computing power, storage and network bandwidth, and are dependent on the cloud provider, pricing model, and resource usage. Egress fees can further add to these costs, making them unpredictable and challenging to manage.

Luc said: "Ensure that your cloud resources match your workload requirements. Cloud resources are highly dynamic, and they can be spread across multiple locations, services, and cloud providers. Overprovisioning resources can lead to unnecessary costs, while underprovisioning can result in performance issues.

Often within a multicloud environment, allocation of resources can be easily controlled to meet varying workload demands. This helps to ensure optimal performance, but can also lead to spiralling costs.

Luc said: "The cloud's easy scalability and deployment are compelling benefits, but when not managed correctly there can be costly consequences. This calls for the use of multicloud management tools in which the allocation of resources can be supported in real time by clear visibility of cost. This gives all teams, including IT, DevOps and engineering, full cost clarity without needing to spend as much time figuring out the details themselves.

"To ensure that a cloud provider can support an organisation's growth plans and easily adapt to changes in workload and resource requirements, businesses should enquire about the provider's ability to quickly provision new resources, support scaling, and offer flexible pricing models based on usage.”

Prioritise storage
Leaders often overlook indirect costs associated with cloud adoption and migration, such as costs to adjust the organisation to operate in the cloud, and residual costs of vacated data centres. Making the switch requires processes such as reskilling teams and adopting agile DevOps practices and can lead to losses in productivity due to unused facilities, licenses, or staff.

Luc said: "Assess your storage requirements and prioritise storage approaches based on business needs. This helps to reduce storage costs while ensuring that critical data is always available.”

Keep an eye on your visibility
Adopting a multicloud strategy can make it difficult to maintain visibility and enforce cloud cost decisions and policies.

Luc said: "Ensure that you have complete visibility into your cloud environment. This helps you identify areas where you can optimise resources and reduce costs. A cloud cost management strategy can assist organisations in planning for future cloud service consumption and costs, as long as the business has visibility.”

Adopt a centralised multicloud management tool
Managing a complex cloud environment with multiple vendors can be daunting. Contracts, SLAs, security protocols and compliance requirements vary by vendor. The situation is complicated further by the need to maintain uptime, performance and reliability while ensuring cost efficiency.

Luc said: "It’s advisable to use a centralised management tool to handle multiple cloud environments. This helps to reduce the complexity and helps companies focus on the resources and skills required for internal IT and networking teams, ultimately leading to improved efficiencies and reduced costs.”

Research from Gartner has shown that 58 percent of businesses ranked "insufficient skills and resources” as the biggest challenge faced when it comes to meeting company cloud adoption and optimisation goals.

"The power and potential of cloud computing is impossible to ignore but can become problematic if not managed in the right way. Working with the right partner can help address the complexities of multicloud management and get a handle on cost,” Luc concluded. (InterCloud: ra)

eingetragen: 01.06.23
Newsletterlauf: 05.07.23

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