How to Optimize Your Cloud Spend

Most companies shift to cloud technology for saving their money. But, it is very difficult to manage cloud costs and reduce wastage. CIOs are now becoming interested in improving their IT infrastructure costs. They are using multi-cloud governance for keeping the over costs down. However, it is not easy to control your cloud spend. According to a report by 451 Research, more than 53% find it difficult to control the cloud costs. Most enterprises are not achieving their actual optimization costs. They don’t have any cost governance plan. Also, they forget to limit their cloud consumption. In this article, we are going to share some tips that will help you in optimizing your cloud spend.

1. Develop a cloud cost governance plan

Most enterprises overspend because they don’t have any consistent budgeting plan. They don’t track their cloud spend. You should first create a cloud cost governance model that will help you in controlling your cloud costs. Also, you need to find the right tools and people for backing up this plan.

First, you should calculate your spending expectations. After that, you should regularly track your cloud spending. It is important to compare your actual budget with a pre-planned budget. This will help you in detecting anomalies. If you are not using some resources, then you should remove those resources. You can also use cloud provider discount models for optimizing your cloud spend. It is important to regularly update your cloud cost governance plan.

2. Monitor your cloud platform usage

It is very easy to add more resources or applications to the cloud platform. However, you should also track the usage of these applications and resources. Every cloud provider already offers monitoring tools to its users. This will help you in finding the minimal configuration required for your business.

Amazon Cloud Watch will help you in monitoring your AWS usage. You can also find the cost report in this tool. This will help you in estimating your cloud costs. Azure is also offering Azure Advisor, Activity log, and Azure Monitor to its users. These are very powerful in-built tools that will help you in monitoring your cloud platform. If you are using Google Cloud, then you can use Stackdriver monitoring for tracking your cloud usage.

There are also many 3rd-party monitoring applications available in the market. However, you should still use the built-in applications provided by your cloud platform. These services will help you in estimating your cloud costs. You can also track your cloud usage by using these applications.

3. Make Server tagging mandatory

Server tags are very important for every business. If you don’t know who is creating new servers, then it will be very difficult to track the usage. Server tagging is a simple process of giving names to the workloads that you are hosting. You can filter by region, web server, database, and applications. Also, you can assign multiple tags to your server. This will help you in effectively monitoring your cloud servers.

Server tags will help you in organizing your servers. You can also gather important information from these tags. This will help you in developing the usage reports of your staff members. If you are not using tags, then you will create many orphan workloads. Thus, it will become very difficult to monitor the usage of your cloud servers. You should consistently deploy theses cloud tags. There are many automation tools available in the market that will help you in streamlining this process. If some process is not tagged, then it will automatically shut down the server. This will ensure that your employees are always following the tag rule.

4. Cloud cost monitoring tools

Enterprises are using more cloud services for completing their services. Thus, CCMO tools are becoming very important with time. Theses cloud cost monitoring and optimization tools will help you in controlling your cloud spend. The main aim of these solutions is to increase the visibility of cloud spend. It will convert all the relevant data into graphs and textual form.

If you are using the correct CCMO solution, then you can easily control your cloud spend. It will help you in monitoring your cloud resources. Most companies are trying to manually analyze their cloud spend. They are trying to handle their multi-cloud policies manually. However, it mostly leads to more cost inefficiency. It is very difficult to monitor every aspect of your cloud spend. You can use the CCMO solution provided by your public cloud platform. These tools will help you in monitoring your cloud costs. Thus, you can focus on other important parts of your strategy.

5. Automate your policies

Most companies are not using any identity management tool. Thus, sometimes they are running multiple instances of the same application. This will increase their cloud bill. You can avoid this by implementing the right tools. These automation tools will help you in automating your cloud policies.

According to a survey by RightScale, more than 49% of enterprises are still monitoring their cloud instances manually. They are right-sizing them by using manual tools. Your cloud provider is already offering you powerful monitoring tools. These tools are already integrated with Azure and AWS. Thus, you must use these tools for automating your cloud policies. This will ensure that your IT team is not wasting its time doing manual tasks.

Automation is the best opportunity to increase your cloud efficiency. It is the easiest method to increase your cloud savings. If you are using manual policies, then your cloud team will waste their time in implementing these policies. These tools will help you in removing inefficiencies from your cloud platform. Thus, they will ultimately help you in controlling your cloud costs.

Conclusion

If you want to control your cloud costs, then you should create a good governance policy first. There are many services and tools available in the market. These services will help you in optimizing your cloud costs. You can use CCMO tools for monitoring your cloud usage. It is also important to tag all your cloud servers. You should also work on automating your cloud policies. Most cloud providers are already offering various amazing services to their clients. You can use these services for automating your cloud policies. If you need more information regarding cloud technology, then you can contact Bleuwire.

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