Cloud Technology is a highly available solution that provides companies with many benefits, including easy on-demand sharing and scalability of resources to meet business requirements.

Whether your choice is a multi-cloud strategy or a hybrid cloud environment, a fixed or dynamic pricing model, there are several valuable practices that will help you ensure cost efficiency and leverage your cloud computing infrastructure.

Let’s read about 5 Cost Optimization Strategies for Cloud Services for different Media Suites-

1. Use Cloud Cost Analytics

A good start is halfway to success. First and foremost, it’s critical to understand where costs are generated in your organization and pay attention to spending trends. Of course, knowing how much you’re paying for cloud services and what infrastructure systems to support is essential.

Full-spectrum cost visibility makes it easy to control cloud-related spending. This can be facilitated using cloud cost management software provided by your cloud service provider (CSP) or IT technology partner.

Quite often, this software is part of a cloud management platform (CMP) and helps you:

1. Monitor cloud resource usage

2. Monitor computing requirements

3. Track expenses related to infrastructure usage

4. Manage costs by linking them to specific items in your infrastructure

2. Use Power Planning

When it comes to our home, most of us try to keep an eye on our energy usage and only turn on the lights when we need to. This is because we pay for exactly what we use. So why should it be any different for cloud computing, where charges are in most cases similar to utility bills based on usage?

One of the advantages that the cloud can support you with is the ability to spin up resources when you need them and vice versa. Shutting down instances when not in use is an effective way to save costs when deploying a public cloud.

While you can manage this process manually, there is a better option to shut down and restart the instances. Your CSPs will bring to the table such tools as:

1. AWS Instance Scheduler

2. Google Cloud Scheduler

3. Azure Automation

These tools allow you to manage the entire process and configure a schedule to set start and end times.

3. Consider Instances

Cloud provider services and third-party optimization tools will help estimate RI purchases and reduce the potential impact of unused resources.

To fully utilize the reserved capacity, consider the following steps:

1. Use reserved capacity only for instances that run continuously.

2. For applications with stable usage patterns that don’t run all the time, get the minimum number of RIs based on average continuous usage.

3. For other applications, choose on-demand pricing, smaller instance sizes, and power planning.

4. Consolidate RI purchases into a centralized account that allows one team to use resources when the other is not.

4. Rightsize Your Cloud

The goal of rightsizing is to minimize costs and maximize performance by eliminating over- and under-utilized assets and ensuring that your infrastructure workload is supported by the right amount of resources.

This can be achieved in three steps:

1. Conduct performance analysis of virtual machines, instances, and volumes

2. Determine what activities you should perform to increase their effectiveness

3. Customize your infrastructure by allocating resources

In most scenarios, companies don’t realize how much capacity they really need. So they overpay for resources they will never use.

Proper memory, CPU, and network monitoring in tandem with CMP would be a robust practice. It can help determine peak resource consumption and define thresholds for your infrastructure.

5. Identify Shadow IT

With the continued consumption of information technology, employees independently install and use software, leaving the IT department without involvement. This situation is referred to as Shadow IT, and cloud services have become a large part of it.

CSPs or cloud access security broker vendors can offer solutions to help overcome Shadow IT. You can also implement measures such as controlling access to applications, listing the types of cloud services available, and simplifying the software ordering and approval process.

Other recommendations include:

1. Streamlining the corporate structure of IT management

2. Data leakage control

3. Allow only approved applications to run in the cloud environment

4. Conduct an audit to track cloud spending

5. Providing corporate training on shadow IT risks

Final Thoughts

Gartner says one of the trends driving cloud adoption in 2020 is cost optimization. Companies are turning to public cloud infrastructure to achieve cost efficiency, business continuity, and scalability.

Although cloud-based setups have great potential to help achieve these goals, they can also reveal some challenges.

Finding the right balance between performance and cost, and iteratively monitoring your infrastructure and accounts is essential. That’s when cloud cost optimization tools come in handy. Take advantage of the solutions that CSPs offer and enforce them using technologies provided by third parties.

We hope our list of best practices will help you manage your resources and choose the right configuration in line with your business goals. You can also reach out to info@bigsteptech.com and our team of Cloud Services experts will be happy to help you set up your infrastructure and do a Cost Optimization of Cloud Services while adding value to your business environment.