News flash from ‘The Obvious Times: Businesses operate differently now than they did 20 years ago. In fact, they operate differently in one major aspect than they did even 5 years ago. Some primitive forms of cloud-like computing date all the way back to the 1990s with time-sharing, ASPs and consumer information services, such as CompuServe and AOL.
In 2006, it really started to become popular, and adopted the name ‘The Cloud’, when Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced S3 and EC2 that year. Back then, it was all about having a place to store data. The Big Game Changer, cloud computing, started in the 2010s, with an explosion of new business and consumer cloud services. Add to that the construction of the hyperscale data centers required to operate them, and Apple iCloud, IBM Cloud and Oracle Cloud all launched.
Like many changes, COVID caused cloud usage to hit hyper speed after the emergence of the remote workforce. Every in house IT Services Department and outsourced form of IT support, like Managed Services Providers (MSPs), scrambled to ensure Cybersecurity protections for the ‘work from home’ crowd. At the same time, cloud providers instituted many new innovations to benefit this remote workforce.
Just like those ancient “It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile anymore” commercials, what we have today is not your father’s cloud anymore. Today, many companies have moved their entire operations (short of physical aspects like manufacturing) in the cloud. Cloud computing offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency, but cloud services also come with a downside: cloud waste.
What is cloud waste?
We don’t mean some kind of ‘industrial cyber sludge’ – this refers to wasted money. Cloud waste is the unnecessary spending of resources and money on cloud services. This usually occurs when cloud-based services are either not utilized or underutilized. These services are often not fully utilized or optimized. Over 32% of cloud spending is wasted. This can lead to budget concerns as spending skyrockets.
That figure of 32% figure represents a missed opportunity. You can reduce nearly a third of cloud spending by optimizing how you use cloud tools.
Let’s examine some smart tactics that can help you reduce cloud waste at your business and save you money.
Perform a Comprehensive Cloud Audit
You should regularly audit various areas of concern, especially before implementing any cost-cutting strategies. Conduct an audit of how you are using the cloud so you can get a clear understanding of your current cloud usage. Conducting a comprehensive cloud audit allows you to identify:
Underutilized resources
Overprovisioned instances
Unnecessary services
Use cloud management tools to generate reports, then look at usage patterns, costs, and performance metrics. This initial assessment forms the foundation for implementing effective waste reduction tactics.
Institute ‘Right-Sizing’ Strategies
‘Right-sizing’ consists of matching your cloud resources to the actual demands of your workloads. It is not unusual for businesses to fall into the trap of overprovisioning. This means securing more user licenses or features than needed, which adds to increased costs and unnecessary waste.
Evaluate your workload requirements and resize instances accordingly using tools provided by your cloud service provider. These tools can identify and adjust the capacity of instances. This ensures that you only pay for the resources you truly need.
Establish Reserved Instances and Savings Plans
Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans are great cost-saving options that are among the handy tools that cloud providers offer. These allow businesses to commit to a specific amount of usage in exchange for discounted rates. By leveraging these options, you can significantly reduce your cloud costs over time.
To determine the most cost-effective reserved capacity or savings plan, analyze your workload and usage patterns carefully and zero in on a plan that aligns with your business's long-term goals.
Institute Automated Scaling Policies
To ensure that your infrastructure scales up or down based on demand, set up your scaling policies to be performed automatically. This will optimize performance and prevent overprovisioning during periods of low activity.
All major cloud services enable you to set predefined policies for scaling. AWS has Auto Scaling and Microsoft Azure has Autoscale. These features help ensure efficient resource utilization without manual intervention.
Track Storage and Optimize it
Storage is one of the original popular uses of the cloud, but those costs can add up quickly, especially when data is not regularly reviewed and archived. It’s important to accurately estimate your storage needs so you can put in place lifecycle policies to automatically downsize lesser-used data. One example is to transition less frequently accessed data to lower-cost storage options.
Review, analyze, and delete any unnecessary data regularly to constantly free up storage space. Adopt a proactive approach to storage management. This can help you significantly reduce associated costs.
Schedule your Cloud Resources
Scheduling your cloud resources to run only when you need them saves money. For example, turn off development, testing, or staging environments during nights and weekends or scale down your production environment during off-peak hours.
For example, you don’t need to cool or heat a 60,000 square foot facility at night when only the watchman is on duty – get him a space heater or a window A/C unit. The same goes for your cloud processes. Use available tools to automate the scheduling of your cloud resources based on the automated rules and policies that you define.
Remove Orphaned or Unused Cloud Resources
How many apps that you never use anymore are still installed? Get rid of them! Sometimes you may forget or neglect to delete cloud resources that you no longer need or use. This can include:
Snapshots
Backups
Volumes
Load balancers
IP addresses
Unused accounts
Unnecessary costs accrue when these items accumulate over time. Avoid this by regularly auditing your cloud environment. Delete any orphaned or unused resources because they are just costly dead weight. You can often use cloud provider tools to find and remove these.
Remove Duplicate Services
With the advances in technology, we often find that a new app makes an old app obsolete. Consolidate the cloud services you use under one company policy. Different departments may use various apps that do the same thing. Marketing may use one task management app, while Sales uses a different one. Get organized and whittle these down to ONE company wide app. Centralize cloud resources and remove duplicate tools.
Once everyone is using the same cloud tool for the same function, you save money while you enhance collaboration, reporting, and data integration by removing confusion.
Establish a Serverless Architecture
The old, trusty server is headed down the same road as the horse and buggy, and there will come the day nobody needs one locally. Serverless computing allows businesses to run applications without managing the underlying infrastructure.
Paying only for the actual computing resources used for your processes eliminates the need for provisioning and maintaining servers, which reduces both operational complexity and costs. Consider migrating suitable workloads to a serverless model. This can help you optimize resource use and cut cloud waste.
Losing the servers and putting all of your options in the cloud does two major things”
1) Saves you a boatload of money, including with laborious cybersecurity efforts and the extra costs involved.
2) Allows users to work from any device – from anywhere, and no disaster can stop your ability to continue your business.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I choose the best cloud service provider?
Again, it depends on your needs, since there are as many levels of quality within the cloud hosting community as there are in the IT Support community. If you have an IT vendor whose knowledge and experience you trust, they will already have done the homework – ask them, and rely on their expertise.
Examining factors such as a potential cloud service’s level of Certifications & Standards – and to a look at the prospect’s bottom line is important: How healthy is the cloud host’s company? Over the decades, many once-healthy technology providers have gone under – leaving their customers in the lurch.
Cloud Industry Forum provides a roadmap of the top ‘8 criteria to ensure you select the right cloud service provider’.
Which cloud service type is best?
This an area open to wide interpretation, but it boils down to which cloud host best suits your needs. In general, Microsoft continues to win the day, with Google Workspace close behind and Amazon Web Services (AWS), following. Google produces a good-enough product, while AWS is still coming of age, but both companies’ trustworthiness in the marketplace remains a question mark. Google fails to guarantee not to sell your data (a major source of their profits), and both have been known to shut down or censor enterprises for nebulous or political reasons.
Microsoft seals the gaps that other cloud providers are still just patching together. Microsoft 365 is a platform that is truly fully integrated and negotiates full cloud operations with ease and the best security.
Mahesh Chand provides an intriguing breakdown in his article ‘Top 10 Cloud Service Providers of 2024’ on C-Sharp Corner.
How do I protect my cloud data from hackers?
The foundation for the best cybersecurity protection lies in these two practices:
1) Back up your data locally – in a NAS or SAN unit not connected to your main network – so you maintain control of your data that hackers cannot get to. You may want to go the extra mile and secure your most sensitive data locally, rather than in the cloud.
2) Use a cloud service that automatically encrypts your data, and make sure it is set up to do so.
Is the cloud completely secure?
Nothing is 100% secure, so the short answer is NO, although the data you store in the cloud can be made more secure than the data you store on your local network or workstation hard drive. The best cloud services providers use the strongest security measures available, such as:
Security Updates
AI and Auto-patching
Firewalls
Data Backup Redundancies
Third-party security testing
Fighting off hackers and malware is like a game of ‘Whack-a-Mole’ – whack one and a new one quickly appears. Crooks always find new ways to get around yesterday’s best security defenses, and they learn from their failures. Remember: Cybercriminals don’t sleep on the job and neither should you.
How secure is your network?
As a longstanding, reputable member of the Charlotte IT Support community, ITFIRM.COM offers a FREE, no-risk network and cybersecurity assessment. We perform a non-intrusive scan that allows us to deliver a comprehensive report of the state of your system and its vulnerabilities that is yours to keep. There are no strings attached, and you are under no obligation to ever use our Managed IT Services.
The two best defenses are next-generation cybersecurity to protect your data from theft, and a top-notch Managed Services Provider to ensure continued reliability and defenses against newly emerging threats.
We put our 100% Money Back Guarantee in writing, so there is no risk in trying us out. Because we do not require a ‘hard’ contract, our clients can fire us at any time with 30 days’ notice. We have to be good.
Among the Managed IT services we provide:
IT HelpDesk Service
Onsite IT Support
Cybersecurity
Cloud migration and management
Email migration services
Backup and disaster recovery
VoIP phone systems
IT disposition and recycling
Office moves
White label services (IT to IT)
Planning an Office Move?
Contact ITFIRM.COM today! We have the experience to ensure a seamless transition. After the office move, your employees will arrive at the new location to find their IT infrastructure ready and open for business!
For more information on office moves, or to receive your FREE no-risk network and cybersecurity assessment, just fill out the form on this page or call us at:
704-565-9705
