Businesses are struggling with unpredictable cloud bills. Managing cloud computing expenses is a growing concern, especially with increasing reliance on digital infrastructure.
According to Gartner, spending on public cloud services is expected to increase 20% through 2024. And with most organizations spending more on cloud storage than they budget, cloud costs can quickly become an unmanageable expense for many.
How can organizations deal with these rising costs without sacrificing the cloud services they need?
Technical Lead for UK & Ireland, ManageEngine.
The Hidden Costs of the Cloud Surprise Businesses
The first step is to identify the hidden costs of the cloud and areas of overspending. Businesses have been caught out by unexpected cloud costs with subscription models, leading to inconsistent monthly costs. The benefits of the cloud, such as scalable IT infrastructure, can be a double-edged sword when it comes to cost and waste. At the same time, many of the largest providers of cloud infrastructure applications and services are increasing storage and cloud hosting costs as inflation increases.
Additionally, without a comprehensive tool to show costs across the entire cloud platform, many companies operating in a multi-cloud environment are unable to track resources, such as a usage-level breakdown. It is easy to overprovision resources in the cloud, leading to waste. Costs often add up, and without full visibility, companies cannot pinpoint the exact cause.
Without full visibility into their cloud usage, businesses will never know where they’re overspending or whether they’re paying for services they didn’t know existed. It’s also much harder for organizations to experiment and innovate with the latest cloud technology if they don’t fully understand what they’re using in the first place.
Cloud cost management and cloud optimization can help minimize costs and maximize the value of cloud investments. Identifying a predictable cloud vendor that can help optimize workloads is critical. Greater transparency into cloud infrastructure is essential, as is investing in tools that can help provide much-needed visibility into monitoring costs and protecting the cloud.
Adopting a holistic approach to cloud management
In complex, hybrid cloud environments, companies often don’t know where their excessive cloud costs are coming from. They often find themselves paying for outdated resources or unnecessary storage.
By taking a more holistic approach, businesses gain greater visibility into their requirements and the associated costs. This not only eliminates waste, but also helps organizations be more strategic about their requirements. But this approach isn’t just about reducing costs – it’s about aligning cloud spending with an organization’s business goals. The goal is to strike a balance between cost efficiency and maximizing the benefits of cloud technology across the business.
The need for scalable and budget-friendly cloud resources is unprecedented. However, companies must also invest in tools that help manage these resources and ensure that the cloud is cost-efficient.
Understand your workloads, implement load balancing, and continuously monitor and adapt to reduce cloud costs. Cloud spending tools that support cloud cost management across cloud platforms give businesses a unified view of their spending and are the most beneficial to businesses.
Businesses should also look for tools that provide in-depth cost analysis and customizable reporting to identify cost drivers, detect anomalies, and track spending trends over time. For example, reports in native tools sometimes don’t track resource utilization or the user-level breakdown to identify who or which resource was attributed to the cost overrun. Most public cloud platforms offer discounts if you pay up front, but the cost overruns and caps often offset the discounts you receive. To capitalize on cost-saving opportunities, businesses should instead identify and invest in tools that can set budgets and cost forecasting capabilities, help anticipate future spending, and plan proactively.
How AI can help
A report from Wasabi found that 49% of CIOs expect AI and ML adoption to pose challenges for the cloud due to the substantial use of data by AI and ML.
However, AI can also be a significant asset when it comes to cloud costs. The technology can potentially bring greater financial governance to the cloud, namely through its ability to detect unexpected spikes or irregularities in cloud spending by analyzing large amounts of data. AI can also play a crucial role in identifying cybersecurity threats and helping businesses keep pace with the technology landscape.
Anticipating cloud costs
Access to scalable, budget-friendly cloud resources is more important than ever for businesses.
The rise of AI and ML has created new demand for cloud space, and research shows that IT leaders expect cloud costs to exceed budget allocations.
In this environment, taking a holistic approach can help businesses monitor the entire cloud landscape to identify rapidly increasing – and unnecessary – costs. Cloud spending tools, along with leveraging technology like GenAI, will also play a key role. Businesses can also foster a culture of cost awareness, which helps keep costs under control and ensures cloud investments deliver maximum value. Ultimately, managing the cost of cloud resources is an ongoing journey.
We provide an overview of the best cloud storage management services.
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