Cloud Cost Optimization for Enterprise-Level Businesses

Cloud computing is crucial for enterprise-level businesses. The benefits of cloud computing include scalability, cost-effectiveness, security, flexibility, and innovation.

How?

In particular, the easy access of outsourced maintenance and management by cloud service providers, allows you to quickly scale your IT infrastructure while reducing costs. The robust security measures protect sensitive data and applications from cyber threats. However, the most well-known benefit is cloud-based services’ flexibility which increases productivity and efficiency by enabling employees to work remotely from anywhere, on any device.

But are you optimized? Cloud optimization is a critical aspect of cloud computing for enterprise-level businesses. It is the only way for you to maximize the value of your cloud investment.

Let’s explore more about how businesses use cloud optimization.

Related Read: Debunking the Top 5 Myths About Cloud Computing

What Is Cloud Cost Optimization?

Cloud optimization is the process of fine-tuning the usage and configuration of cloud resources to ensure maximum effectiveness and efficiency. It starts by first identifying and then optimizing the areas where resources are being wasted or underutilized.

Cloud optimization is crucial for enterprise-level businesses, because it helps cloud investments to be more strategic.

Why is Cloud Optimization a Concern for Enterprise-Level Businesses?

As per a survey of 750 senior enterprise IT professionals, more than one-third of businesses overrun their cloud budget by up to 40%. (Source: https://www.g2.com/articles/cloud-cost-management-statistics).

This is a concern for any organization.

Enterprise-level businesses face many other challenges when it comes to managing their cloud infrastructure.

Here are the most common ones:

Complications in multiple cloud platforms and services management:

With the rise of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments, enterprise-level businesses often face the challenge of managing multiple cloud platforms and services. This leads to a lack of consistency, increased confusion, and higher costs due to the need for specialized skills and tools.

Difficulty in cost control and prediction:

‍Cloud computing is known for its cost-effectiveness, but enterprise-level businesses may struggle to control their cloud costs due to the dynamic nature of cloud infrastructure. This results in unexpected bills and overspending, negatively impacting business operations.

Lack of visibility:

Enterprise-level businesses often lack tools for proper visibility into cloud usage and analysis of resources. This results in the underutilization of resources and wasted costs.

Trade-offs of cost, performance, and security:

‍Enterprise-level businesses face challenges in balancing the need for cost efficiency with application performance and security requirements. This causes cross-team conflict.

Strategies To Maximize The Cost Efficiency Of Cloud Infrastructure

Some commonly used strategies by enterprise-level businesses to maximize the cost efficiency of their cloud infrastructure are:

Using cost allocation tags:

Cloud service providers offer cost allocation tags for categorization and tracking. The tags help businesses identify the highest cost centers, allocate costs properly, and optimize resources.

Utilizing automation and scaling features:

‍Tools for automation and scaling optimize resource usage and costs. One example is using an auto-scaling feature to automate and adjust resources based on demand, which will reduce costs during periods of low usage. Businesses can also use automation to schedule when assets are turned on or off such as an automatic shut down during non-business hours.

Applying cloud-native best practices:

‍Cloud-native best practices help enterprise-level businesses optimize their cloud costs. For example, when serverless computing is implemented as a best practice, it eliminates the need to provision and manage servers, therefore reducing infrastructure costs. Another technique is containerization. Containerization allows multiple applications to run on a single host, reducing the number of instances needed.

Using cloud cost optimization tools:

Cloud service providers and third-party vendors offer a range of cost optimization tools, such as AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, and Google Cloud Billing, all which are used to monitor, analyze, and optimize cloud costs. These tools feature cost management dashboards, optimization reports, and alerts, which can help enterprise-level businesses to identify real-time cost savings opportunities while optimizing their cloud infrastructure.

Training employees on the cloud:

Employees may be trained on cloud cost management best practices, such as resource tagging, rightsizing, and automation. The training helps raise awareness of cloud costs, promote cost optimization, and improve overall cost efficiency.

Related Read: Why More Companies are Adopting Multi-Cloud Strategies

The Benefits of Cloud Optimization

Key benefits that enterprise-level businesses gain from cloud optimization include:

• More cost savings: Simply reduce unnecessary costs, such as over-provisioned resources, idle instances, and storage redundancy by optimizing cloud infrastructure.
• Better resource allocation: Identify underutilized or overutilized resources and allocate them more efficiently with cloud optimization.
• Improved agility and scalability: Adapt quickly to changing requirements and market conditions. Cloud optimization improves the agility and scalability of businesses by enabling faster resource scaling and provisioning.
• Better decision-making: Cloud optimization features provide better visibility into cloud costs and infrastructure and costs, enabling better-informed decisions by organizations.
• Cloud strategy alignment: Cloud optimization enables cloud strategy that is better aligned with business goals by providing insights into cloud usage patterns, trends, and costs.

Undoubtedly, cloud services are not only indispensable for enterprise operations, but also form the foundation for modern businesses to expand. Yet, businesses should always weigh out the costs and benefits.

Cloud cost optimization is an ongoing process and requires continuous monitoring.

If you're an enterprise-level business looking to optimize your cloud costs, it's essential to have a well-defined cost optimization strategy plus a team responsible for monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing your cloud costs.

Get in touch with us at https://sparsolutions.com/contact-us. Our cloud experts will help you implement tools and strategies for cloud cost optimization so you can unlock the full benefits of cloud computing for your business.