Cloud Cost Management Tools: Can They Help Rein In Escalating Cloud Costs?

There’s a notion that workloads run more effectively in the cloud than in an on-premises deployment. It’s true, but it’s not always the case. And even when moving to the cloud does help save money, it’s always possible to optimize your cloud spend further. One of the ways to achieve optimal use of the cloud is to invest in the right cloud cost management tools. These tools help you identify the expensive systems and usage outliers responsible for escalating cloud costs. Here’s how they help.

Right-Sizing Server Instances.

To optimize cloud costs, you have to size your cloud server instances correctly. You have to choose the server instance type that’s right for your workloads. If the instance has fewer resources than needed, then it might perform inefficiently during periods of heavy demand. Having too many resources, on the other hand, will pile up the costs.

Rightsizing server instances requires a critical assessment of the resource requirements of your workloads. You also need to forecast how your needs might change with time. Follow this up by determining which instance best meets your needs. Public cloud providers offer different instance types that meet all sorts of enterprise needs. Rightsizing is usually a manual affair, but you can always use cloud cost management tools to automate the process.

Switching Off Unused Resources

Be aware of what you’re running on the cloud at any one time. Switching off inactive cloud resources can help lower cloud costs. Cloud cost management tools can send alerts when they identify unused resources. For example, it can alert you when you have a database that no one has accessed recently.

Automating Scaling

Automated scaling allows your workloads to access more cloud resources during peak demand. It scales back resources when they’re no longer needed. Most cloud providers have autoscaling tools that you can configure to meet the needs of your enterprise.

Taking Advantage of Storage Tiers

Public cloud providers offer storage tiers at different prices. If you have data that you don’t access frequently stored in the cloud, you might want to move it to a lower-cost storage tier. But you must be sure how long it would take to export data from that tier whenever you need it. It’s probably best to move secondary data backups since speed won’t be important when you need it. Cloud cost management tools can help identify the data you rarely use and move them to a lower-cost storage tier. 

Optimize Cloud Costs Between Providers

The costs of the public cloud vary widely. Often, providers allow users to run virtual servers at discounted prices. For example, Amazon Web Services offers Spot Instances, whereby it provides access to spare infrastructure on its cloud. They cost up to 90 percent less than they would normally cost when accessed on demand. These instances are not always available, so they’re not good for workloads that run constantly. However, periodic high-intensity tasks can run on those instances and save the enterprise a lot of money. Some cloud cost management tools synchronize costs from public cloud providers. This enables IR to visualize and compare costs in real time.

A final word

Gartner (2018) claimed that more than 80 percent of enterprises would exceed their forecasted IaaS cloud costs. It’s the same for all other cloud costs. All enterprises with cloud deployments should employ cloud cost management tools.

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