Ask the majority of cloud users why they moved, and they’ll likely tell you price. See, on-premise IT comes at an eye-wateringly high upfront cost. And while some are prepared to pay that to avoid monthly fees, it doesn’t cover the maintenance of physical servers.
Hardware requires care to keep it running smoothly. Cloud however, evolves and helps bring all your applications to the cutting-edge for an affordable monthly cost. The trouble is, not every organisation on the cloud manages to pull this off.
So, to ensure you’re an organisation that does, we’ve provided five ways you can optimise the cloud to keep costs down.
1. Assess your assets ahead of adoption
Don’t just rip and replace what you have now and move it online. Some of your applications may not need to move across and could cost more resources than they’re worth if you do.
If you’ve got a site for instance that has multiple third party modules, it’s difficult for AWS (or Azure) to effectively modernise it.
Your cloud platform of choice may also have an alternative to the technology you’re hoping to move over. Take Azure, instead of moving your exchange server, you can transition to Office 365 – a more intuitive platform that can modernise your processes.
2. Scale out efficiently
Of course, if you do bring everything across onto the cloud, you’ll need to figure out a way to scale. Now, this isn’t like on-premise where you increase the amount of hardware you have. In the cloud, adding more instances as opposed to increasing your RAM is a better strategy.
Why? Because scaling out as opposed to up allows you to handle the software in a more optimal way, with less downtime and freedom to reduce costs when traffic falls.
To do this, you need to auto-scale. Don’t be fooled, auto-scaling isn’t exactly automatic. You have to configure it so that it determines how many instances should be deployed to handle traffic. But when you do, you’ll enjoy lower cloud spend – and a more responsive solution to spikes in traffic.
3. Don’t store everything
Believe it or not, there is such a thing as worthless data. Simply put, not everything needs to be moved across to the cloud.
Yes, migrating data online does declutter your internal data centres, however it also increases your cloud spend. So, be ruthless with information you’re confident you no longer need. And don’t hesitate to store some on-premise if you’re operating a hybrid model.
In fact, if your intention is to operate a hybrid model, check out which platforms best support that set-up. Again, Azure has a file sync feature where it optimises the storage of your information so that it’s cost-effective.
4. Fine-tune your infrastructure
Once you’ve decided which apps and systems you want to upload to the cloud, you should restructure them so that they economise all of the cloud resources available.
Simplify them with tools like Docker so that they run more efficiently and better integrate with cloud technology. Again, if they can’t be salvaged or evolved, then it’s better to cut the dead wood.
5. Use a managed billing service
Finally, manage your billing. Cloud billing can be delivered in dollars, proving daunting for first-time adoptees. However, with a managed billing service, organisations can check against wasted resources and see their spend in a currency that makes sense.
ClearCloud offer one such service and ensure complete spend governance for those who use it. What’s more, as part of our service, we’ll run reports on the security of your cloud environment and check they meet compliance standards.
The ClearCloud way
The cost benefit of cloud technology has always relied on expertise. And while the above will help reduce your cloud spend, each suggestion requires an experienced pair of hands to implement.
At ClearCloud, not only can we help you achieve the cost benefit you chose cloud for but also streamline your finances going forward. No more unexpected spikes in your fees – just easy to understand reports and expert advice on where to allocate budget.
Sound good? Request a callback today and a member of the team will be in touch.
