Organizations are Investing more on the convenience of the cloud, but even though it’s more efficient, the cloud does come with costs. The cloud is cheaper than traditional setups, but it’s still good to optimize cloud costs. Since 67% of all organizational infrastructure lives in the cloud, IT directors need to maximize their efficiency and data availability.
With more cloud solutions on the market today than ever before, it’s important to prove that your team is using the best options for your budget. In this guide, we’ll break down how cloud cost management works and five tips to help you get more value out of the cloud.
What is cloud cost management?
Cloud cost management is the process of maximizing cloud resources while minimizing expenses. Instead of simply slashing bills, this process seeks the cloud’s ROI. The average person uses 36 cloud services every day, so it’s no wonder why there was a 35% year-over-year increase in spending on cloud infrastructure from 2020 to 2021.
However, this boom in cloud resources led to organizations signing up for tools they didn’t really need, leading to a lot of waste. Even if the cloud is cheaper than traditional alternatives, you still need to manage the costs of the cloud to ensure ROI.
With cloud cost management, you can better manage your cloud usage and the costs that come with it. It’s a practice that helps you control what you spend on cloud resources across your organization, with the hope that you can be more cost-effective overall.
Proper cloud cost management can help organizations with:
- Cost visibility: See where you’re spending money and find more savings opportunities. Since 32% of organizations’ IT budgets went toward cloud solutions in 2021, there are plenty of opportunities to save more money.
- Anomaly detection: Cloud cost management platforms can help you spot sudden increases in expenses. Smart alerts will help you act quickly so you can reduce expenses in real time, too.
- Employee empowerment: Don’t remove cloud resources if employees need them to do their jobs. Cloud cost management helps you find a happy medium between employee needs and cloud financial management.
- Vendor management: Managed service providers handle cloud setup and maintenance, which makes things much easier for your organization. But if your cloud vendor gets something wrong, it can cause a chain reaction that will disrupt your business. Cloud cost management helps you look at the numbers to assess whether you should keep your current vendors or look elsewhere.
5 cloud cost management tips
Whether you’re on the public or private cloud, it’s important to rein in your expenses. Here are five tips to help you get even more out of your cloud solutions.
1. Combine cloud data with networking edge computing
Edge computing makes the cloud faster and more secure. If you want to get more out of your cloud resources, introduce edge computing into the equation. Edge computing makes it possible to process data closer to your end users, which can enhance speed and security. As a result, it boosts your cloud performance, which can help you optimize costs, too.
If you want to invest more heavily in the cloud but worry about security, edge networking can ensure that cloud-stored data is readily available to the right users while still keeping your important information secure.
For example, solutions like Rainbow Edge from Alcatel-Lucent give you an on-premise private cloud solution that’s also highly secure, so you can enjoy the cloud without the security headaches. Check out their resource on refreshing your edge computing to get more value out of the cloud.
2. Audit your cloud resources
Where are your biggest expenditures in the cloud? Which resources are you underutilizing — or not using at all? After all, if employees use a license just a few times a year, it isn’t an efficient use of your IT budget.
You can only find cost efficiencies if you audit all of your cloud resources on an organizational level. If certain employees don’t use cloud resources, that’s a sign that you either need to reduce your licenses or change your team’s workflow.
Stop spending money on tools you don’t use. Cloud cost management helps you spot idle resources so you can shut them down and route your resources to what matters.
3. Set up monitoring and alerts
With the right cloud cost management platform, you can check up on your cloud resources and spending in real time. For example, schools can monitor the cloud with regular cost and usage reports to ensure they’re using the licenses they pay for.
If you sign up for cloud resources, you need to ensure you use them at an appropriate level. Check your cloud cost management dashboard often to monitor usage and expenses to make faster data-driven decisions.
4. Opt for scalable pricing
The biggest reason organizations migrate to the cloud is for scalable pricing on a per-user model. If you have this arrangement with your vendors, make sure you use it. For example, if you need more users during the busy holiday season, ramp up your subscriptions leading up to Q4 and decrease them in Q1. Make sure you set reminders to scale down after the busy season so you don’t pay for unused licenses.
5. Simplify and consolidate
It seems like there’s a new cloud tool on the market every day. Is there any way you can simplify or consolidate your cloud tools? You can see cost and time savings by bringing disparate tools into one platform. You can usually score better pricing this way, and your employees will love having all of their tools in one place.
Cloud cost optimization with Dice
It’s tempting to add more and more cloud tools to your organization in the hopes of improving productivity, but every cloud resource needs to add value. On the flip side, you shouldn’t remove tools with impunity. Cloud cost management requires a thoughtful approach that balances efficiency with value. The cloud will only become more important for organizations across the globe, so follow these five tips to keep your costs low while maximizing performance.
It also helps to have the right tools in your corner. Dice gives organizations the flexibility, design, and support for both private and public cloud infrastructures. Trust our experts to determine the appropriate moves logistically and financially for your business. Dice provides right-sized cloud communications for every business and every budget with edge networking solutions that keep your employees and customers securely connected at the speed you need. See how we can help your organization get more value out of the cloud.
Dice helps organizations manage cloud computing costs by creating a custom private or public cloud infrastructure that meets your needs.
You can manage cloud computing costs by reducing your licenses, streamlining cloud solutions, and monitoring expenses in real time with a cloud cost dashboard.
Edge networking speeds up the performance of the cloud by bringing data processing closer to your end users. This can also increase the security of the cloud, especially if you have on-premise solutions.
