When it comes to cloud, the best waste is no waste at all

The Wall Street Journal has recently highlighted cloud waste or overspending for cloud services. Finops or more digestible and transparent public cloud services could potentially address this phenomenon.

What is cloud waste? Cloud waste can be defined as the money that a company spends unnecessarily on services they don't use or are underused from public cloud providers. Cloud waste is typically caused by a team that over-provisions a service or poor communication regarding the company's cloud budget.

In times of economic turmoil and cash shortages, businesses can face real risks if they pay too much for the cloud or use cloud resources inefficiently. The solution is easy: Businesses must partner with the best service provider. Both parties in a contract must look out for each other. The contract will benefit both parties in the long run if this principle is followed. IT is crucial for the survival of a business, especially in the cloud. Transparency and fairness are therefore more important than ever in business relationships.

Costs: A sobering challenge

In 2022, eighty-two per cent of the enterprises Flexera Software surveyed cited managing cloud expenditure as their top IT challenge. This is the first time that cloud spending has surpassed cybersecurity in the more than ten years since the survey was conducted.

Cloud bills aren't easy to control, as it is not as simple as cutting IT costs in other areas such as hardware and software. Downsizing usually means cutting equipment or licensing. Cloud computing is a rapidly evolving technology that requires constant attention. Avoid using public cloud services that:

You'll be lured into a coded maze of software environments that appear to be open-source.

This can lead to a loss of perspective.

The maturity of things

You usually start your public cloud journey with a handful of controlled applications. Operating expenses (OpEx), rather than capital expenditures, can provide speed and agility. As the years go by, your business grows and you consume more, but also your apps become more expensive. Your controlling officer will eventually ask about the cost savings of running certain workloads on the public cloud as opposed to on-premise. The CIO is also pushing for more operational autonomy. The more data and apps you move to the cloud, the more difficult it is to move.

Such scenarios in recent months have led to discussions about cloud repatriation, which is the return of IT workloads on-premise. This means that organizations move applications back from the public cloud, and then restore them or relocate them into co-located facilities.

In September 2021, 451 Research reported that 48 percent of 600 IT decision makers said they had moved apps or workloads to another cloud vendor.

Hyperscale is a bottomless pit

Cloud hyperscalers and their wide range of cloud services are the focus of discussions on cloud waste, which is a catalyst for repatriation. Cloud repatriation, while costly, is an admission that the cloud user made a mistake by entrusting workloads to cloud hyperscalers too easily. Is a significant step back to premises the best way to eliminate the cost monster?

Transparency and simplicity are important.

You can better manage your IT resources by anticipating and planning the impact of changing trends in your business. This will help you avoid overspending and losing control. Alternative cloud offerings such as IONOS can handle more workloads than expected. Pareto's Law at work. What is the difference?

This GUI is a simple and easy way to manage cloud resources. It's not just a CLI or an API.

Cloud architecture and professional services.

These elements can make a significant difference in reducing cloud waste, and lowering costs.

Home sweet home and on-premise

Cloud repatriation is often seen as a way to reduce cloud waste. It can give you a sense of comfort. How much will it cost you to train your staff to use the repatriated system if you decide to run workloads locally? How will you find this trained staff? Are you able to meet SLAs in terms of performance, availability and security? What about latency, compliance, and latency? What is the ROI of non-flexible IT installation?

Imagine that you didn't have to pay a lot of money or get a second full-time job just to monitor or manage these cloud services. There are other cloud services available. Cloud computing is often as good as or better than on-premise.

Consider going beyond hyperscale. Cloud costs can be optimized by balancing utilization and capacity, as well as aligning workloads to the right performance class. IONOS enables SMBs to optimize their cloud costs through transparency and ease of use.