Cloud computing has transformed how businesses function by bringing scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. Yet, even with these advantages, there’s a hidden cost: cloud waste.

Cloud waste refers to underutilised or unoptimised cloud services, leading to unnecessary spending. Did you know that more than 90% of organisations use the cloud [source: O’Reilly]? That’s a huge number, and it reflects the undeniable benefits of cloud computing. However, a staggering 32% of cloud spending is wasted due to underutilised resources and unnecessary services [source: Cloudzero]. That’s a significant chunk of your IT budget!

This inefficiency presents an opportunity. By optimising your cloud usage, you can potentially cut nearly a third of your cloud expenses.

The good news is that there’s a lot you can do to optimise your cloud usage and reduce waste. Here are some smart tactics to consider:

1. The Power of a Cloud Audit

For optimal cloud utilisation and cost control, a comprehensive cloud audit is an essential first step. This proactive approach provides a clear picture of your current cloud environment, allowing for strategic optimisation.

Through a thorough audit, you can identify:

• Underutilised Resources: Resources that are not consistently meeting their capacity can be downsized or repurposed, leading to significant cost savings.
• Overprovisioned Instances: Instances configured with more processing power or storage than necessary can be right-sized to better match your actual workload demands.
• Unnecessary Services: Services that are no longer actively used or don’t align with your current needs can be discontinued, eliminating needless expenditures.

Cloud management tools play a crucial role in this process. By leveraging these tools, you can generate detailed reports that provide insights into usage patterns, cost breakdowns, and performance metrics. This data-driven approach forms the foundation for effective waste reduction and cost optimisation strategies.

2. Right-Size Your Cloud Resources

Achieving optimal cloud resource allocation is paramount for maximising cost-efficiency. Right-sizing, a strategic approach to cloud resource management, ensures your organisation pays only for the processing power, storage, and other services it demonstrably uses.

Many businesses fall prey to overprovisioning, allocating more resources than their actual workloads demand. This translates to wasted expenditure and inefficient resource utilisation. Right-sizing eliminates these inefficiencies by meticulously aligning cloud resources with your specific workload requirements.

Through a thorough analysis of your workload characteristics, including processing power needs, storage demands, and network bandwidth requirements, you can identify opportunities to downsize instances. Cloud service providers offer a plethora of tools to assist in this process. These tools analyse your usage patterns and recommend optimal instance configurations, ensuring cost-effectiveness without sacrificing performance.

3. Leverage Reserved Instances and Savings Plans

Cloud providers offer a variety of tools to optimise cloud spend, including Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans. These programs reward organisations with significant cost reductions in exchange for a commitment to upfront payment or sustained usage.

Reserved Instances (RIs):

RIs provide substantial discounts for resources you commit to using for a specific term (typically one or three years). This approach is ideal for predictable workloads where resource requirements remain relatively constant. A thorough analysis of your workload characteristics is crucial for selecting the most cost-effective RI option.

Savings Plans:

Savings Plans offer flexible discounts based on your overall cloud usage over a defined period. Unlike RIs, which require an upfront commitment to specific resources, Savings Plans reward sustained usage across any instance types within a chosen payment option (e.g., compute, storage, memory). This flexibility makes them suitable for workloads with some degree of variation.

By carefully analysing your historical usage patterns and projected workloads, you can determine the optimal combination of RIs and Savings Plans to achieve maximum cost savings. Cloud service providers often offer tools and guidance to facilitate this analysis.

4. Install Automated Scaling Policies

For workloads characterised by fluctuating demand, achieving optimal resource utilisation can be a challenge. Automated scaling policies offer a sophisticated solution, enabling your cloud infrastructure to dynamically adjust to changing needs.

These pre-defined rules function as intelligent guidelines for your cloud resources. By continuously monitoring key metrics (CPU utilisation, memory usage, network traffic), automated scaling policies seamlessly scale your cloud environment up or down based on real-time demand.

Some Cloud providers supply user-friendly interfaces for configuring automated scaling policies. These tools allow you to define thresholds and scaling actions, ensuring your cloud environment adapts seamlessly to dynamic workloads.

5. Track and Optimise Storage

Uncontrolled cloud storage can balloon in cost. Here’s a two-step approach for significant savings. First, declutter your data. Analyse usage patterns to identify frequently and infrequently accessed data. Second, implement lifecycle policies to move less-used data to lower-cost storage tiers automatically. 

6. Schedule Your Cloud Resources

Maximising resource utilisation is paramount for achieving true cloud cost efficiency. Resource scheduling offers a strategic approach to this challenge, enabling you to pay only for the computing power and services your organisation actively uses.

Imagine production environments that seamlessly scale down during predictable low-demand periods, or development and testing environments that power down entirely outside of business hours. Cloud resource scheduling empowers this level of granular control.

By scheduling resources to run only when needed, you can significantly reduce costs associated with idle resources. Cloud providers offer user-friendly tools to automate resource scheduling based on pre-defined rules and policies. These tools empower you to create customised schedules that align perfectly with your unique business rhythm.

7. Delete Unused or Orphaned Resources

Over time, unused or forgotten cloud resources like snapshots, backups, volumes, load balancers, IP addresses, and unused accounts can accumulate and incur unnecessary costs.

Regularly audit your cloud environment and delete any unused or orphaned resources your business doesn’t require. Cloud provider tools can often help you find and remove these.

8. Weed Out Duplicate Services

Departmental tool silos create inefficiencies: wasted spending, hindered collaboration, and data integration headaches. A centralised cloud strategy with standardised tools across departments offers a multi-pronged solution. This approach eliminates duplicate subscriptions, fosters seamless collaboration, and simplifies data management, ultimately reducing costs and empowering data-driven decision-making. 

9. Embrace Serverless Architecture

Traditional cloud deployments often involve significant overhead associated with server provisioning and ongoing maintenance. Serverless computing offers a compelling alternative, enabling organisations to focus on application development and business logic.

In a serverless architecture, the cloud provider manages the underlying infrastructure, including servers, operating systems, and networking. This eliminates the need for your IT team to dedicate resources to server management, freeing them to focus on higher-value activities such as application development and innovation.

Furthermore, serverless computing offers a highly cost-effective approach. You only pay for the compute power your application utilises during execution, eliminating the burden of idle server costs. This pay-as-you-go model fosters significant cost optimisation, particularly for applications with variable workloads.

Reduce Cloud Waste, Optimise Your Business

By following these smart tactics, you can reduce cloud waste at your business, optimise cloud spending, save money, improve operational efficiency, and even enhance environmental sustainability. 

Feel free to contact us if you need assistance with your IT or Cloud Services! 

Email info@theoasis.co.za 

Call (011) 784 9167 

Find us at 117 11th Street, Parkmore, Sandton, Johannesburg.