3-ways to reduce cloud costs in your business
Managing updates across multi-cloud platforms are time and resource-intensive processes. The cost equation gets more complicated as businesses develop; adding additional AI, machine learning or any other innovative tech to a cloud environment builds complexity and additional cost.
The growth of cloud management and cost optimisation software can provide visibility and automation tools to deliver cost control. Optimising cost and reducing cloud spend against best-practices, across the most complex cloud environments.
Number One
Cost optimisation basics
With over 400 updates from AWS alone last quarter, there are numerous process updates that can help manage efficiency and cost control. Essential updates can include various discount levels available which should be applied against billing. A cloud management tool like transACT’s Cloud Management Portal (TCMP) can provide automated policy updates; delivering continuous detection and automation of policies providing efficiency, governance and cost savings across the cloud estate.
Best-practice
The speed and agility of cloud delivers innovation but ensuring best-practice is implemented is vital to an optimised cloud strategy.
Examples can be shown with Amazon Web Services (AWS); ensuring Reserved Instances (RI) and storage volumes are managed to best-practice has a significant impact on cost savings. Criteria checks, for example, for On-Demand instances detects any that should be taking advantage of lower Reserve Instance pricing. Additionally, On-Demand instances should be checked to whether they billed correctly as RI’s. Another best practise can be found with unattached EBS volumes incurring costs when not utilised; by detecting, moving or deleting data cost savings can also be made, that together, make a significant impact into top-level cloud savings.
Automated cost detection and reporting
To be able to detect spikes in cloud cost and prioritise them can drive down cloud costs. Automated reporting that identifies issues and priorities them based on value and savings to your business can save you thousands per month in right-sizing compute or down-sizing EC2 instances amongst others, removing the time and cost of your team manually searching and actioning. Tailored reports can be shared with cost-centres and team to show detailed usage and cost, including future reporting.
Growth of cloud cost optimisation tools
While cloud drives the agility and innovation within your business, the control around cost and delivering best-practice for cloud is vital to enforce. Accountability for cloud cost control sits across the business but to manage manually across teams and cost centres is resource and time hungry. This is where Cloud Management tools like TCMP deliver single-pane visibility, cost control, and governance for the most complex of cloud infrastructures. The reporting and automation of policies and process deliver a powerful set of tools to business to detect issues against best-practice and real-time resolution. Providing on-going control and significant cost-saving across cloud environments.
