More applications and services are migrating to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) models. A significant portion of IT infrastructure outsourcing expenditures are being redirected to cloud providers, and knowing your cloud bill and budget with cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) is becoming a top priority. Amazon cost optimization has evolved into its own field, complete with specialized tools, economic models, and best practices for cost reduction.
For cloud customers, determining the overall cost can be difficult, especially for projects with complicated pricing structures.
The best AWS cost improvements are examined in this post to help you grow your platform successfully.
While moving to the cloud is a good idea, doing so permanently can be costly. Pepperdata estimates that up to 40% of organizations go over their cloud budget, increased agility & streamlined situations. Your cloud infrastructure may wind up being more expensive than on-premises if you choose a cloud service provider that does not fulfill your company’s demands, chooses the incorrect server size, or has underused or idle resources.
What are the indicators that you require cloud cost optimization, how to go about doing it effectively, how much money can you save, and which companies have previously profited from it?
Let’s find out in this article right now.
Signs That Cloud Cost Optimization Is Necessary
You must keep in mind that if you adopt the incorrect strategy, cutting expenses might risk another goal. You run the danger of becoming locked into a particular cloud vendor, for instance, if you drop one of the cloud providers to reduce cloud costs.
Remember that cutting cloud computing expenses is not the main objective. Your goal is to lower expenses relative to business results. You shouldn’t cut back on cloud charges if a certain cloud expenditure has a positive impact on your organization.
When choosing cost optimization in the cloud, you must be fully aware of the potential effects. You should, however, be certain that you need cloud cost optimization in some circumstances, as follows:
- You run a mid-sized business or organization
These companies frequently undertake difficult projects that take a long time, have large expenditures, and employ more people. So, it is harder for such organizations to determine if all of their resources are distributed properly.
In addition, a larger workforce increases the possibility of human error, which can result in significant cloud charges. For instance, your staff members can fail to turn off any additional cloud resources they utilized to finish a work.
2. You run a global tech company
Processing the enormous volumes of data that their technology created requires effective tools. The majority of the company’s segregated data was maintained on-premises, which came at a high cost and complicated scaling. Data accessibility challenges were brought on by the dispersed IT resources, which also resulted in ineffective data governance, storage, management, etc. The Monthly Service Reviews (MSRs), which were monthly equipment performance reports delivered to clients, were produced with the use of this data. Because it needed a costly third-party instrument and included a lot of human labor, this method was inefficient and wasteful.
3. You don’t have a clear picture of your cloud expenditures
If your company is consistently going over its cloud budget, this is a strong indication that you want cloud optimization. You must be certain about the cloud services you employ and how they assist your organization. If you don’t have this insight, it’s essential to hire a reliable technology partner to help you track all of your cloud resources and optimize what needs improvement.
Learn More: Digital Business Initiatives that Drive Managed Infrastructure Deals for Agile Software Company
4. Your cloud spending can be put to better use
Even if you understand your expenditures, that doesn’t mean you can’t make better use of your resources. In this circumstance, your technology partner can, for example, assist you in identifying alternative and wiser methods to the processes you already have in place.
3 Major Steps for Successful AWS Design Principles for Cost Optimization
BJIT’s Well-Architected Framework recommends three design principles for AWS cost optimization. Here is a summary of these principles:
- Implement cloud financial management
Every infrastructure optimization project must include an audit, and the cloud is no different. Find convincing justifications for the necessity of optimization at this time, as well as any negative effects and potential long-term outcomes for your improved cloud infrastructure. It’s crucial to know what cloud resources you have and how they’re truly being used.
Each project is normally audited by a separate team of trusted suppliers. For instance, at BJIT, it is referred to as the product discovery phase. The BJIT team adapts the scope of your solution throughout the discovery phase depending on the objectives of various stakeholders, the user journey map, and market research. The team creates all the deliverables necessary to effectively begin the implementation phase by validating the assumptions and hypotheses from various Business Analysis, UX, and IT Architecture perspectives.
Additionally, keep in mind that a robust devops consulting services is required if you want to conduct a complete cloud audit.
During this phase, it’s crucial to:
- Locate resources that aren’t in use or connected
Searching for underutilized resources is the simplest method for cost minimization in the cloud. When buying a temporary server for work, an employee could forget to switch it off when it is finished. Alternatively, storage connected to terminated instances could not have been properly removed. These frequent errors result in costs for resources that are no longer being used, so they should be avoided.
2. Find and combine idle resources
Your company might lose thousands of dollars due to idle resources. If a resource is not fully utilized, it is said to be idle. For instance, if you only use 20% of an instance, the remaining 80% is idle. And your cloud provider continues to bill you at 100%. Therefore, make sure your vendor locates the free resources to address them afterward.
- Planning
It is time for the planning step once the audit is complete and you are certain that you might use your cloud more effectively. Your team must choose the optimization strategy that will work best for your company.
For instance, a tried-and-true BJIT strategy for optimizing cloud infrastructure is to create Kubernetes clusters and Docker containers. By doing this, for instance, we could build a system with five virtual computers and ten apps running on it. With such a strategy, our clients can cut back on hosting expenses and steer clear of issues in the event that one of the machines malfunctions. The system automatically switches over services housed on a failing server to other ones. The services also go back to their original location once the computer starts working again.
- Implementation
A team moves on to the implementation stage after they have distinct knowledge and vision of how the cloud optimization process will appear. With the aid of a DevOps service provider, you can:
- Lower the amount of infrastructure used;
- Automate the CI/CD workflow and handle cloud infrastructure provisioning;
- Get rid of unused instances;
- Scale back your workloads;
- Know if resources aren’t being used;
- Use autoscaling to your advantage;
- Move storage that is infrequently used by less expensive providers;
- Set up warnings when specified spending criteria are exceeded;
- Spot instances can be used for serverless applications and other tasks that don’t need high availability;
Over the years, BJIT has developed a few best practices that aid in timely and high-quality cloud solution delivery.
Let’s examine these ideal practices:
- The appropriate computer services
Analyzing computer services and optimizing their size is what this procedure entails. You may optimize a server’s memory, database, computing, graphics, storage capacity, throughput, and other aspects in addition to its physical dimensions.
- Invest in technologies that cloud companies offer to save costs
There are several cloud suppliers out there that provide techniques for reducing cloud costs. While a wide range of tools might be useful, only a trustworthy IT partner can guide you in selecting the ones that will benefit your company the most. The two biggest competitors on the market are Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
Also Read: Prepare For The Future of Digital Innovation with BJIT
- Make an informed decision between single-cloud and multi-cloud strategies
Some businesses choose a multi-cloud strategy to prevent vendor lock-in. This approach to boosting availability and uptime is effective. On the other side, by working with a single cloud vendor, these companies may run the risk of losing out on possible savings.
If you spend $500,000 on Amazon, $300,000 on Azure, and $200,000 on Google Cloud Platform, that would be your spending breakdown. This prevents you from using a single vendor to attain the $1M tier. The benefits of that $1M tier might include significant savings on total cloud costs and favored treatment from that specific vendor. So, you should keep in mind that the multi-cloud method is not a one-size-fits-all strategy.
- Choose a trustworthy technological partner
A fantastic way to reduce the cost of your cloud computing is to partner with a reliable vendor. The Telegraph reports that businesses may reduce their operational expenses by up to 30% by outsourcing IT operations. With a dependable partner at your side, you can minimize all risks, expand your team with ease, and create your solution within the budgeted time and cost.
Why should you entrust BJIT with your cloud cost optimization?
Our Cloud experience encompasses on-premise-to-cloud migration, cloud-to-cloud migration, and multi-cloud and hybrid cloud administration. BJIT has a talent pool of over 800 specialists, including certified cloud experts, who can help you improve project delivery or design a solution from the ground up.
We provide professional DevOps outsourcing services such as Cloud adoption (architecture, migration, and optimization), building and streamlining CI/CD processes, detecting and preventing security issues (VAPT, DDOS, and intrusion), firewall-as-a-service, and more in accordance with global tech standards.
