The digital transformation that has taken place over the last few years cannot be understated, with most businesses now partially or fully operating in the cloud. As a result, they’re able to access new technologies, deliver consistent workplace experiences and bolster a culture of true productivity and collaboration.
For some businesses, this comes at a considerable cost, with IT now amounting to a considerable percentage of their budgets, far more than what they were pre-pandemic.
However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Few businesses have adequately reviewed their cloud usage since moving to the cloud, and many could make significant savings by doing so. But whose responsibility is it to assess and report back on cloud efficiencies?
In this blog, we look at five ways to reduce spiralling cloud costs – from working more collaboratively to taking a more data-led approach to using cloud solutions and managing your cloud infrastructure – without jeopardising the quality of service.
Bringing it back to business objectives
When moving to the cloud, the primary objective for many business leaders was to facilitate a new way of working collaboratively and productively in a hybrid and remote working world. Many saw the cloud as an opportunity to reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO) whilst maintaining the levels of service delivery they were used to. In most cases, the cloud has enabled that.
However, as technologies have advanced, businesses are adding more to their cloud infrastructure without properly reviewing what they already have and what they need. As such, they may be incurring unnecessary costs without realising.
By taking a “back to basics” approach and reviewing their cloud usage in line with their overarching business objectives, they’ll be able to objectively assess their state of play and identify areas for cost savings.
Working in a more collaborative way
Cloud usage becomes more efficient and cost-effective when internal teams come together to plan, execute and assess.
By spending more time planning and forecasting with other internal teams, businesses could identify ways to budget and resource more effectively. Instead, by working in silos, many are duplicating effort and incurring additional cloud-related costs, including licensing and solution usage.
Owning technology usage
We see it time and time again, at the request of their internal teams, business leaders agree to invest in a new technology and within a short space of time, daily usage begins to drop. However, there are occasions whereby solutions go unused as a tool isn’t quite fit for purpose and therefore, the ongoing cost continues to sit on the P&L. With the average enterprise business having upwards of 150 different individual pieces of technology, the costs of day-to-day technology solutions begin to spiral out of control.
If individuals were to have open conversations about the reasons for their decrease in daily usage, businesses could put plans in place to provide additional training or support or begin the offboarding process for each solution.
Taking a data-driven approach to cloud consumption
Unlike a decade ago, businesses now have more access to more data than ever, yet many are unsure about how to use it to inform what they do. At a business level, leaders should be able to see how each individual within each team is using (or not using) specific solutions, enabling them to identify solutions that are no longer required.
Similarly, reviewing actual cloud usage can help businesses to better forecast their cloud consumption over time.
Data and the insights that data provides are pivotal to any cloud strategy, but we know businesses can struggle to understand how to use the data they have available to make informed decisions. If you, too, are in this boat, get in touch with our expert cloud team, who can help.
The need for cloud governance
Establishing a framework for governing cloud usage (and, therefore cloud expenditure) is key to avoiding unnecessary costs. With a robust governance framework in place, finance teams can implement financial control measures to prevent overspending, whilst engineering teams can create guidelines around resource efficiency, with operational teams overseeing their adherence.
By having a solid cloud governance framework in place, businesses can foster a much stronger culture of accountability and transparency, whilst driving consistency across teams and solutions.
Time to review our cloud usage?
If you’re worried about spiralling cloud costs or unsure how to assess your current cloud usage and whether costs can be saved, sign up for a fully funded cloud optimisation assessment with phoenix47.
