AWS Cloud Cost Optimization Guide – Strategize Your Cloud Cost Control

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While cost saving is one of the major benefits of moving to the cloud, it’s not guaranteed. Many factors need to be considered when optimizing cloud costs. The cost of cloud migration depends on specific requirements and circumstances like business use cases, the organization’s size, and data storage duration.

Overprovisioning resources, no usage of cost optimization tools, unused or underutilized resources, and management challenges all contribute to higher cloud costs. Fortunately, with careful planning and implementation, you can maximize your cloud ROI and deploy the most cost-effective and efficient business operations without losing performance or security.

While the pay-as-you-go cloud computing model provides considerable flexibility, organizations must be vigilant in ongoing cost control to maximize ROI. Consider the industry leader, Amazon Web Services (AWS): the typical expenditure on AWS is projected to be 35% to 45% of the overall cost.

By Choosing the AWS platform, a business can manage costs, but sometimes specific culprits drive up AWS overspending. Here in this blog, we will address these culprits in relatively straightforward ways and share solutions for AWS cost optimization.

What is Cloud Cost Optimization?

It is a process that involves identifying, analyzing, monitoring, and managing crucial areas of underused and lost resources to save costs. It entails resource analysis, tracking resource usage patterns, instance identification, and more.

Beyond resource monitoring and management, cloud cost optimization aims to identify and eliminate any unnecessary or underutilized resources and ensure that users get the most out of their cloud investment at each level.

Having a cloud cost optimization strategy in place is important for businesses and, in fact, beneficial. According to the Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud report, 59% of businesses planned to optimize their present cloud expenses. Furthermore, according to a McKinsey report, “around 80% of enterprises consider managing cloud spending a challenge.” As a result, managing your cloud charges is a challenging affair. It places a requirement for experts for cloud cost management.

Common Cloud Cost Optimization Challenges One has to Deal With

1. Poor Visibility

Due to poor visibility into cloud spending, businesses experience challenges in cloud cost optimization. The failure to track cloud resources and spending makes it difficult to make up cost-related decisions in a company. Consider having a cloud cost optimization partner who can provide more significant insights into your cloud expenditures via a holistic view (dashboard) of all cost centers in your cloud. The correct cloud cost management partner can assist you in optimizing, monitoring, and managing your cloud resources while also eradicating any hidden cloud charges.

2. Over-provisioning of cloud resources

Sometimes businesses choose cloud resources without anticipating their requirements, which leads to unnecessary cloud costs and inefficiencies. Acquiring more resources than the actual requirement of a business is termed as over-provisioning. When you underutilize cloud resources, they remain idle, and you will be forced to pay for what is not consumed or used, leading to unwanted expenses that may go out of control. According to the Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud survey, over 59% of companies anticipated greater cloud provisioning than planned. Choose a usage-based model and deal with over-provisioning smartly. AWS offers the same, so you can go for it and choose the experts to get the support in AWS cost optimization.

3. Multilayered complex billing and cloud cost breakdowns

Cloud bills, in general, are not all-inclusive, full of complexities and technological jargon. It becomes much more complicated when you employ a multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud approach. Because billing practices constantly change, your cloud bills may differ from month to month, making it impossible to create “budget vs. forecast vs. actual usage” comparisons. Gartner states, “95% of business and IT leaders find cloud billing the most perplexing aspect of using public cloud services.” A trusted cloud cost optimization partner can regularly provide detailed, easy-to-understand cloud bills. They assist you in identifying cloud wastes and making profitable modifications for AWS cloud cost optimization by breaking down the cloud bills.

4. Poor cloud architecture

Moving to the AWS cloud offers secure, reliable, and scalable workloads. But a poor cloud computing infrastructure contains design problems, insufficient resource utilization, or weak security measures, leaving room for cyberattacks, unauthorized data access, and even data loss. This can result in a number of business obstacles and problems, including increased prices, poor performance, and security risks. Get experts’ help to adopt a cloud architecture that is optimized for cost, scalability, resource utilization, automation, and security.

AWS Cloud Cost Optimization Best Practices

The capacity to manage cloud systems to offer business value at the lowest possible cost is Cost Optimisation. AWS offers a wide range of services and pricing options that make it challenging and confusing to optimize cost. However, with several best practices, and expert assistance, AWS cloud cost can be optimized, and here are a few of them.

1. Consider Usage

Keep your eyes on the cloud usage to identify any wasteful, irrelevant, or unnecessary use. Choosing a trusted Cloud cost management professional can track your usage and identify areas where you can cut costs and deliver the best solutions.

2. Choose the right service type

AWS offers a variety of services, each with different capabilities and pricing. Choose the one that best fits your business workload and usage patterns to optimize cost. A trusted AWS cost optimization partner can help you choose the correct instance for your business need.

3. Adopt a consumption model

For AWS cost optimization, identify areas of inefficiencies and reduce unnecessary spending. Pay for the computing resources you need and adjust consumption based on business needs rather than using complex forecasts. Monitor your consumption and expenditures regularly to ensure that your cost-cutting methods are effective. Make changes as necessary to optimise your spending on the cloud.

4. Use AWS Marketplace

AWS Marketplace offers pre-configured software and services to save you time and money. The third-party software solutions it provides replace or enhance costly in-house systems. AWS offers discount opportunities such as RIs and savings plans that help you save up to 75% compared to on-demand instances.

Plan AWS Cost Optimization with Us

If you understand the importance of AWS cost optimization, you will drive substantial savings and optimization. Cloud cost optimization is a continuous process. You’ll need expert professionals to analyze and comprehend your expenditure, execute cost-cutting measures, set governance principles, and track usage and prices. You can reduce your costs without losing performance or security if you choose the best AWS cost optimization partner.

R Systems is a trusted AWS Advanced Tier Services partner that can help with Cloud cost management. We have experts to streamline your AWS cloud cost optimization journey. Their robust cloud cost optimization capabilities help you manage cloud costs while achieving optimal cloud performance, getting visibility into resources, making accurate budget forecasts, and much more.