Cloud Cost Management
What is Cloud Cost Management?
Cloud cost management is the practice of understanding and evaluating the expenses involved in cloud operations to control costs and optimize spending for the best possible value.
What are the advantages of cloud cost management?
Cloud cost management helps IT administrators optimize their cloud budgets and avoid overprovisioning and overspending. Diligent cloud cost management involves:
- Best practices and strategies for managing cloud services and budgets
- Continuous monitoring and awareness of cloud spending
- Business event monitoring and timely alerts when spending changes
- Evaluation of cloud cost performance over time
- Identifying and eliminating underutilized services to control costs
- Regular reporting to clarify usage and aid decision-making
Why cloud cost management?
Cloud services enable unprecedented visibility and control over IT resources and costs, but only when IT managers take advantage of the information and tools available to them. The speed, agility, and scalability that make cloud services such a powerful asset can quickly become liabilities if they are used carelessly—it’s easy to exceed IT budgets and overspend on cloud computing without careful planning and attention. Dedicated cloud cost management can help IT decision-makers understand the ongoing costs of cloud computing and optimize their spending for the level of services their organization requires.
Is cloud cost management becoming an issue for businesses?
Organizations migrate from traditional on-premises infrastructure to cloud-based computing for many reasons, including flexibility, scalability, security—and cost. Potential cost savings can be a powerful motivator for cloud migration, but many organizations are unprepared for the actual costs and ongoing expenses of cloud operations.
Cloud migration converts the cost of IT infrastructure from a capital expense to an operational expense. Instead of a large upfront investment in on-premises infrastructure, the costs of cloud computing are distributed over time and can scale up or down easily to meet demands.
But the total cost of cloud services, although often lower than that of legacy infrastructure, may be higher than anticipated. Cloud cost management can help businesses achieve a realistic and accurate understanding of the expenses involved.
Questions to consider before migrating to the cloud:
- How do we evaluate cloud costs at all levels of our organization?
- How do we optimize our spending on cloud resources?
- How do we allocate cloud costs at organization and team levels?
- How will we provision resources after the migration?
- How do we monitor and control spending over time?
- How do we prevent overprovisioning and overspending?
IT administrators are well advised to look—and think—before they leap. Thoughtful, organized cloud cost management will help them do that.
Cloud cost management strategies
Unanticipated overspending on cloud services can be managed or avoided with a reasonable degree of preparation. Cloud cost management is an important part of the planning process before, during, and after cloud migration and an important part of an ongoing cloud services business strategy.
Comprehensive cloud cost management should include:
- Regular reporting and reviews of current cloud service consumption
- Regular audits of billing and financial data
- Established policies for provisioning cloud resources
- Governance and policy recommendations to limit utilization and spending
Third-party cloud cost management services can provide objective, unbiased analysis and recommendations for optimizing cloud spending to meet your specific business needs.
HPE and cloud cost management
HPE GreenLake for Continuous Cost Control provides end-to-end visibility of cloud financials, as well as detailed analysis and recommendations for reducing your cloud costs. Based on HPE’s experience from hundreds of successful cloud engagements, the service provides:
- Full use of the continuous cost control tool across multiple cloud accounts and vendors
- Monthly/quarterly reports with the guidance of an HPE expert
- Evaluation of cloud cost performance over time
- Recommendations on how to better manage and optimize cloud environment costs
- Business event monitoring to alert on cost increases or decreases over time
HPE Cost Audit for Cloud is a portfolio-level analysis of your current cloud service utilization, providing specific, immediately actionable recommendations for lowering your costs in the cloud, as well best practices and governance strategies for monitoring and managing future cloud expenses. This service can be performed as a one-time evaluation, before or after cloud adoption, or at regular intervals as part of an ongoing cloud cost management strategy.