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Proper planning is crucial when moving to the cloud in order to take advantage of the cloud’s cost saving opportunities.
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Successful organizations regularly review and optimize their cloud resources to ensure maximum efficiency, noted Milewski.
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Employee training is also prioritized within these cloud success stories in order to boost cloud-related skills and reduce “the likelihood of inefficient practices,” according to Milewski.
It’s no surprise that organizations are racing to the cloud — and emptying their pockets while they’re at it. With a growing cloud system storming our way, how can an organization catch and reel in cloud spend waste without sacrificing business outcomes?
To minimize unwanted cloud costs and waste, successful organizations have well-defined optimization strategies in place, according to software development company Hyland’s SVP, cloud platform engineering, Will Milewski. Yet many organizations today are still making common mistakes while planning their next cloud moves.
Silverlinings caught up with Milewski over email for a Q&A on how organizations can navigate its cloud spending to minimize waste. What’s in the forecast? Grab your umbrella and hold on tight to your piggy banks, because it’s “cloudy with a chance of budget breakdown.”
Common mistakes in the cloud
The biggest and most common mistake an organization can make in the cloud “is the lack of a well-defined cloud cost-optimization strategy,” Milewski stated, adding that companies who are good at cost cutting already have one in place.
Proper planning is crucial when moving to the cloud in order to take advantage of the cloud’s cost saving opportunities. No planning? That leads to the allocation of more resources than necessary and resulting in waste, said Milewski. Waste — you guessed it — results in higher expenses.
Other common mistakes companies make include leaving non-production environments running 24/7 when automation tools can start and stop these environments to significantly reduce expenses. Plus, failing to monitor and optimize database usage can inflate costs, which could up cloud costs over time, he added.
Finding success
Successful organizations regularly review and optimize their cloud resources to ensure maximum efficiency, noted Milewski. Plus, they leverage “reserved instances and savings plans” provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and others. These offer “a compelling option for cost-conscious leaders,” which allows a company to commit to a set amount of resources over a period of time.
Ironically, Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky cited cloud optimization as a reason for AWS’ recent growth sludge. Google and Microsoft have shared similar announcements.
Employee training is also prioritized within these cloud success stories in order to boost cloud-related skills and reduce “the likelihood of inefficient practices,” according to Milewski.
Still, at many organizations, employees are not receiving proper training to manage cloud platforms, according to Milewski, leaving organizations blindsided to cloud-cost saving opportunities. He implied that organizations should be fishing for cloud waste early on in their cloud migrations to ensure efficiency and that only necessary services are being used, which all waters down to fine-tuning what you truly need in the cloud.
“It’s important to perform housekeeping in the cloud. When business is booming, routine tasks — understandably, I might add — can be forgotten or deprioritized. Don’t let it happen to you,” concluded Milewski. “By effectively monitoring assigned compute resources based on consumption you will ensure you will not impact overall cloud margin.”
Want to learn more about moving core networks to the cloud? Don’t miss our upcoming Telco Core Strategies Summit on Sept. 18. Learn more and register here.