We’re entering an era of cost-cutting in the corporate world. From benefits to personnel, software, tooling and infrastructure, enterprises are sparing nothing when looking for savings in 2023.
One of the more common expenses to fall under the microscope lately is cloud spending. The cloud offers an unmatched level of flexibility and scalability. However, as many enterprises have found over the last several years, running your workloads on the cloud can get expensive — sometimes far more costly than if you were to maintain all of your infrastructure in physical servers on premises.
A common misconception about the cloud
Among a number of its benefits, cloud computing allows enterprises to build without being bound by their physical hardware. Infrastructure is managed by a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and the business pays a usage-based fee.
This arrangement makes it very easy to quickly spin up and scale cloud instances as you need them. There is no need for ongoing maintenance or staffing personnel to take care of the hardware. The CSP does that, so businesses don’t have to take on the overhead.
That said — there is a common misconception that the CSP will handle everything on your cloud instance. In a recent survey from Veritas Technologies, 99% of IT decision makers reported that they believed that the CSP would be responsible for managing the day-to-day of their cloud instances.
The reality is the opposite: The CSP is responsible for maintaining the resiliency of their cloud, but they do not normally manage backups, security, data access, egress and performance enhancements.
Organizations can sometimes request these services as add-ons to their bills. As well, CSP’s often maintain strict usage thresholds. When an organization doesn’t keep a close enough eye on bandwidth and storage usage, they can incur overages, which can be costly.
Due to add-ons and overages, 94% of respondents in the Veritas study reported that they were spending more money than they had expected with cloud service providers.
How can you cut costs, but not capabilities?
If your organization is like many, you are likely feeling the pinch to cut costs in 2023. How can you reduce cloud costs without sacrificing the capabilities that your team needs?
- It’s best to start with a frank conversation with your team. Many enterprises migrated to the cloud under the mistaken assumption that it is a “set it and forget it” approach to IT infrastructure. You are responsible for managing your workloads, whether it is in the cloud or on-premises.
- Run a thorough audit of your compute and storage instances. Map out the services and infrastructure that your organization uses and assign an annualized cost to them. What can be eliminated, consolidated or migrated to a less costly platform?
- Next, audit the add-on services you use. Which backups, egress services, performance enhancements and security services actually meet your team’s needs? Another interesting data point from the Veritas report was that 76% of IT teams reported that CSPs fell short in their offerings. Is there something that you could do better — and for less — than your CSP?
- Begin to develop your migration plan. Procure hardware and hire new personnel if you need extra headcount to manage your on-premises infrastructure.
- For workloads you leave on the cloud, take advantage of cloud provider discounts and offers, such as reserved instances and pre-paid plans.
- Migrate, and closely monitor your infrastructure costs to ensure that it stays within budget.
Finally, schedule regular meetings with your IT team to review usage and costs. This gives everyone an opportunity to discuss what is working and what isn’t, so that you can make sure that you are getting the most out of your cloud environment.
Conclusion
With careful planning, a thorough understanding of your infrastructure and usage, and regular reviews with your IT team, you can cut costs without sacrificing capabilities in 2023.Need a hand with cutting costs? Sanity Solutions can help. Our cloud experts will help you identify areas of overspending and develop a strategy to reduce your costs while still taking advantage of the powerful capabilities that the cloud offers. Contact us today to learn more.
