3 min read | Nov 30, 2023
While the cloud’s flexibility and scalability are great, they can also make it costly if used inefficiently. Whether you’re using the cloud already or are planning to, you need to ensure the greatest return on your investment. That’s where cloud cost optimization comes in. Here’s how to reduce cloud costs and manage the cloud optimally.
What is Cloud Cost Optimization?
Cloud cost optimization is more than just cutting costs or services. It means understanding cloud usage, noting inefficiencies and eliminating waste without weakening your security, data and more. Whether you’re using the cloud for communications, processing, storage or anything else, it has to be ongoingly reevaluated for performance and cost-effectiveness. This is especially true as organizational demands and circumstances change.
Cloud Cost Optimization Solutions & Strategies
These best practices for cloud computing can help you get started.
1. Get Right-Sized
Cloud costs are heavily tied to the reserving of services, regardless of if they’re actually used. Right-size usage means matching the demand each service has to the closest level of needed support. The process of right-sizing can be easier with workload assessments, heat mapping and more.
2. Understand Anomalies
Are you noticing seemingly random spikes in your cloud spending? First, confirm they’re not actually part of a larger, year-round pattern. If not, your analytics/billing can hopefully show if there’s a larger cause for concern. Consider network traffic, CPU use and any important metrics that can help you discern what’s happened. To ensure you don’t have to deal with hidden or obscured cloud cost data, collaborate with a trusted cloud partner.
3. Take A Long-Term Approach
Try to avoid over-relying on solutions like elastic load balancers or block storage that don’t get to the core of your cloud challenges. While they can certainly help in doses, it’s best not to forget about them or let them go on indefinitely on their own. This will often only amount to extra costs and little-to-no long-term change.
4. Create Greater Budget Alignment
Cloud cost optimization can require a company-wide mindset shift. If possible, try to keep all key stakeholders engaged with current cloud spending/what it’s going towards. Having a monthly budgeting meeting to review your bills and reevaluate your budget with your stakeholders can have a huge impact. The more optimized your cloud budget is, the more effective forecasting and planning can be.
Achieve Cloud Cost Savings Without Performance Concessions
Identifying and implementing improvements can be easier said than done. Give yourself greater control over costs by partnering with a cloud optimization company. Benton Tech offers clear, straightforward pricing—with minimal upfront costs—to get your company transitioned to or optimized for Office 365. This ensures you can keep your focus on where it’s best spent: running and growing your business.
Our services ensure that you have:
- Seamless, anytime access to what your org needs for operations, collaboration and success—emails, calendars, contact lists, documents and more—from any device.
- Web traffic filtering that fits with the priorities and protection needs of your organization.
- Email protection that operates 24-7 to stop viruses, data breaches and more—even through any outages.
- Automated cloud backup and recovery services for continual peace of mind and access to your assets.
Maximize Cloud Cost Optimization With Benton Tech
The cloud offers near-unlimited resource capacities and innovation potential when used effectively. Benton Tech can partner with you to create a seamless cloud infrastructure and resource scalability for all your demands. Request a free consultation or call (919) 794-6697 to get started now.