Hidden Cloud Computing Costs You Should Avoid

There are hidden charges in almost every bill you pay. All of these hidden charges can cost your company a lot in the long term. Cloud computing is no different. There are many hidden charges associated with cloud computing. If you’re not careful then you will easily exceed your cloud budget. For example, some companies used to have a $1m/month budget for their cloud management. But, in month end they end up paying about 1.25$/month for their cloud management services. How does this cost rise? The answer is hidden costs.

There are many different clouds computing area that can catch you off guard. There are many hidden costs in Software as a service model and Platform as a service cloud setup. But, these hidden costs or charges are never truly hidden. With some research, you can easily learn how to control these hidden costs. Thus, you will be able to save more on cloud computing. Now, we are going to discuss some of the hidden cloud computing costs that you should avoid.

1. Data Transfer Costs

Most of the new cloud customers get a major shock when they see the data transfer costs for the first time. Keeping this data transfer out costs should be your priority if you want to save some money.

Transferring your data into a new cloud infrastructure is mostly free. But, transferring it back definitely costs a lot. These transfer costs vary from provider to provider. Make sure you take into account data transfer costs when you are choosing a cloud provider.

You can also choose your provider’s content delivery network to cut down the transfer costs. For example, if you are using AWS then you can use AWS Cloud Front. This will also speed up the data transfer process. Also, don’t forget about the bandwidth charges before you start transferring data. You can choose the cheapest bandwidth plan to save some money. Do some research on your provider’s charging structure and build an efficient and cheapest data transfer route for your company.

2. Using too many Resources.

Most of the companies use way too many resources for managing their cloud computing network. Some of these resources include computing, databases, storage, bandwidth etc. There is no need to buy so many resources for your company. It is like buying a car garage when you have a motorcycle.

Make a list of the resources you need. If you are having resources which are useless, then you can remove them. You can use cloud cost governance tools for finding useless resources. If your business is using too many resources then you are bound to overspend. These resources have too many hidden costs which you are not aware of. Thus, do proper research before buying any new resource for your new company.

3. Not shutting down unused resources.

Most of the companies forget to shut down cloud resources when they are not in use. According to some research, individuals spend about several hundred dollars every month just because they forgot to shut down their storage resources. Now multiply this by 10,000 and that is what businesses are paying extra month. Thus, these hidden costs can increase your companies cloud budget for no reason. Don’t forget to turn off the resources which are not in use.

4. Using free trial.

Most of the cloud vendors like Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS have various offers for new users. You can sign up for a free trial on these websites and enjoy free cloud resources for a month. But, most of the people forgot to shut down the resources after the free trials. Thus, they get shocked when they see the heavy cloud bill in the month end. If you are using a free trial cloud account, then don’t forget to shut down the resources after the month end. You can use only the resources which you need after your trial is over.

5. Lack of Flexibility.

Many businesses constrain their cloud computing team. They don’t want to adopt too many changes. Thus, this can act as an obstacle in the future expansion of your business.

Cloud computing is evolving every day. Thus, it is important to evolve your business with it also. You can get cheaper cloud computing services by upgrading to a new platform. Thus, try to migrate your cloud to a new cloud environment which will allow your application to grow in the future. This will also prevent many hidden future costs as many companies have to restructure their whole cloud architecture when they want to update in the future.

6. Unhealthy Resources or Instances.

Unhealthy resources can be a big factor in wasting your company money. These unhealthy instances easily go unnoticed. The worst thing is that these unhealthy resources are also very bad for your cloud infrastructure as they will also drag down the performance of other applications and resources. Make sure to find all the unhealthy resources in your cloud architecture.

You can easily deal with these unhealthy instances by using Autoscaling. Auto-scaling is a scaling feature supported by most of the cloud vendors like Azure and AWS. If you are using auto-scaling, then you can easily configure your resources. Auto-scaling will automatically adjust the number of running applications according to the conditions. For example, Auto scaling will automatically set your CPU utilization according to the conditions.

This helps in fine-tuning your cloud performance. Most auto-scaling services can also find and remove unhealthy resources. Thus, you won’t waste any extra money on these unwanted resources.

7. Extra Static IP Address.

A static IP address is a very costly and limited resource. Most of the vendors only give one free static IP address. For example, if you’re using AWS then you will get one EIP (Elastic IP) address for free. Similarly, Microsoft Azure will give you around 5 free static IP Addresses. If you want to use more static addresses then you have to pay the hourly cost for it.

If you are not using extra static IP addresses, then don’t forget to release it. These static IP addresses can cost you a lot of money for no reason. Only buy extra static IP addresses when you actually need them.

These hidden costs in cloud computing are very hard to avoid. But, with strategic planning, you can definitely cut down some hidden costs. Thus, you can use the extra money to buy new resources for your company. If you are doing strategic planning before jumping into the cloud, then you will definitely save a lot of resources and money in the long term.

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