A recent study published by Flexera (previously known as the RightScale State of the Cloud Report) suggests organizations, on average, waste 27% on their cloud spend annually. Furthermore, 31% of respondents are expecting their cloud spend to increase in the next 12 months. With millions of dollars going to waste, TechBeacon published six ways to control your costs moving forward. Here is our summary:

• Understand the basics - Far too often, end-users don’t monitor and manage their monthly cloud bill.  Review your bill monthly to truly understand  where your dollars are being spent. This will help identify what your “average” spend looks like.
• Analyze spikes and anomalies - Review the various spikes and anomalies on your bill from a month to month basis. Root cause analysis will help determine whether these spikes are considered “normal” or whether they can be avoided in the future.
• Right-size your environment - Organizations need to consider what over-provisioning machines can do to their monthly bill. Setting alerts to manage over-provisioning can dramatically improve your bill and performance altogether.
• Examine storage costs - Similar to analyzing compute/network resources, organizations also need to consider what type of storage they are using. Audit your internal projects to determine whether the appropriate type of storage is aligned to each project. You might also find your “completed” projects still utilizing cloud storage as well.
• Identify the right provider per location - Do you have all your workloads with one provider today? Unless your provider is offering a unique service, consider using different providers for your workloads to save on costs. In addition, many providers charge different service rates based on your geographic location meaning the exact same workload will be more expensive in one location vs another. Evaluating geographic costs across the board can help you save money.
• Do your homework - Since your cloud journey is critical to the organization’s success, it is imperative for organizations to always do their due diligence before committing to a provider (or multiple). One good way to learn  is to speak with references about their experience. Another suggestion is to read the fine print of your contract. What expectations will each provider have of you? Navigate this scenario correctly and you will avoid any “hidden” costs.

Now more than ever end-users have tools available to them to responsibly grow their cloud environment. Spend an adequate amount of time vetting each provider and their expectations prior to any commitments. Once you made a decision on which provider (or multiple) to use, right-size your compute/storage/network resources to avoid over-provisioning and higher costs. Lastly, elect individuals within your organization dedicated to the management of your cloud spend. If irregularities arise, he or she should have the autonomy to speak with the right teams and implement changes if needed.

Implementing one or all of these practices will surely help manage growing cloud costs.

For additional questions, set up time with an Opkalla engineer to optimize your cloud journey. Contact us today.