When businesses move to the cloud, the decision is usually made with two things in mind: efficiency and cost savings. For most companies, storing your data in the cloud is far more cost-effective than purchasing and managing massive server facilities to then hire internal IT staff to maintain the hardware, software, and infrastructure.
The problem is that moving everything to the cloud doesn’t automatically translate to savings and productivity. You also need to optimize your cloud experience to keep costs down and improve business performance.
What Is Cloud Optimization?
It’s important to understand exactly what cloud cost optimization means. Cloud computing holds a lot of potential for businesses, but your ability to use it effectively goes beyond just choosing the right technology. You also need to have the right people and the processes in place to utilize the cloud to its fullest potential.
Cloud cost optimization involves:
- Ensuring that your current structure supports your cloud computing goals
- Finding and eliminating waste
- Identifying mismanaged resources
Strategies for Cloud Cost Optimization
Since most cloud services operate on a model where you pay according to your usage, effective optimization strategies look for ways to eliminate wasted resources and get better use of the ones you are paying for.
1: Select the right cloud computing services.
Cloud computing is about more than just server sizes. To get it right, you also need to know how much memory, storage capacity, throughput, and database capacity are required for your operations. There are millions of possible combinations you can choose, and it might be difficult to understand exactly what your team requires. Choosing the wrong combination could result in significantly overpaying for things you definitely don’t need. An outside consultant with expertise in cloud migration can help you identify what services are important and help you design the perfect cloud structure.
2: Audit resource usage.
Two of the most common ways businesses waste money on cloud computing is paying for services they don’t use or having resources that are idle for hours, days, or even weeks at a time.
You may have unused resources after someone on your IT team uses a temporary server for a limited function and then forgets to shut it down. Auditing your entire ecosystem can help you find things you’re not actively using but you are paying for.
Idle resources are the result of a lack of coordination among departments or a lack of understanding about how much cloud space you need. For example, if you have 10 different departments using cloud services, each one might have wasted capacity that your company pays for but does not need, and consolidating could cut costs significantly.
Some administrators may worry that eliminating this extra “headroom” leaves them no flexibility to scale up in an emergency if needed. But it’s better to identify cloud services with automated load balancing and scaling that offer on-demand resources when your needs increase, then reduce your capacity again when the spike is over.
3: Use data to your advantage.
One of the biggest benefits of a cloud environment is the extensive data available for you to access and analyze. Information like heatmaps – which help you visualize hourly, daily, and weekly demand peaks – help you plan resources so you have enough capacity. You can also see when you can safely shut down servers that are not in use to save money.
Optimizing Your Cloud Costs
Cloud cost optimization is a critical step to ensure that your cloud services are accomplishing your goals of better productivity and lower costs. Enterprise Visions can help you move to the cloud in the most cost-effective way. Contact us today to learn how to get started.