fbpx
Sherpa Digital News
Smart Tactics to Reduce Cloud Waste at Your Business
Smart Tactics to Reduce Cloud Waste at Your Business
By James Sharpe
Smart Tactics to Reduce Cloud Waste at Your Business

Cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses operate. It offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. But cloud services also come with a downside: cloud waste.

Cloud waste is the unnecessary spending of resources and money on cloud services. These services are often not fully utilized or optimized. About 32% of cloud spending is wasted. This can lead to budget concerns as spending
skyrockets.

But that figure also holds opportunity. It means that you can reduce nearly a third of cloud spending by optimizing how you use cloud tools.

So, how can you reduce cloud waste at your business and save money? Here are some smart tactics to consider.

Conduct a Comprehensive Cloud Audit

Before implementing any cost-cutting strategies, conduct an audit. It’s essential to have 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. Look at usage patterns, costs, and performance metrics. This initial assessment forms the foundation for implementing effective waste reduction tactics.

Put in Place Right-Sizing Strategies

Right-sizing involves matching your cloud resources to the actual demands of your workloads. Many businesses fall into the trap of overprovisioning. This means securing more user licenses or features than they need. This leads to increased costs and unnecessary waste.

Analyze your workload requirements and resize instances accordingly. Use 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.

Use Reserved Instances and Savings Plans

Cloud providers offer cost-saving options like Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans. These allow businesses to commit to a specific amount of usage. This is in exchange for discounted rates. By leveraging these options, you can significantly reduce your cloud costs over time.

Carefully analyze your workload and usage patterns. Then, determine the most cost-effective reserved capacity or savings plan. Find a plan that aligns with your business’s long-term goals.

Install Automated Scaling Policies

Dynamic workloads have a need for dynamic resource allocation. Install automated scaling policies. These ensure that your infrastructure scales up or down based on demand. This optimizes performance. It also prevents overprovisioning during periods of low activity.

Cloud services enable you to set predefined policies for scaling. Examples are AWS Auto Scaling and Autoscale in Azure. These features help ensure efficient resource utilization without manual intervention.

Track and Optimize Storage

Storage costs can accumulate quickly. This is especially true when data is not regularly reviewed and archived. Estimate your storage needs. Then, put in place lifecycle policies to automatically downsize lesser-used data such as transitioning less frequently accessed data to lower-cost storage options.

Regularly review and delete unnecessary data to free up storage space. Adopt a proactive approach to storage management. This can help you significantly reduce costs associated with data storage.

Schedule Your Cloud Resources

Schedule your cloud resources to run only when you need them. For example, turn off development, testing, or staging environments during nights and weekends. Or scale down your production environment during off-peak hours.

Use available tools to automate the scheduling of your cloud resources. Base this on automated rules and policies that you define.

Delete Unused or Orphaned Cloud Resources

Sometimes, you may forget or neglect to delete cloud resources. Resources that you no longer need or use. This can include:

  • Snapshots
  • Backups
  • Volumes
  • Load balancers
  • IP addresses
  • Unused accounts

These resources can accumulate over time and incur unnecessary costs. To avoid this, you should regularly audit your cloud environment. Delete any unused or orphaned resources your business is not using. You can often use cloud provider tools to find and remove these.

Weed Out Duplicate Services

Different departments in the same organization may be using duplicate services. Marketing may use one task management app, while Sales uses a different one. Centralize cloud resources and remove duplicate tools.

Having everyone use the same cloud tool for the same function can save money as well as enhance collaboration, reporting, and data integration.

Embrace Serverless Architecture

Serverless computing allows businesses to run applications without managing the underlying infrastructure. You pay only for the actual compute resources used for your processes. This 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.

Schedule a Cloud Optimization Assessment Today!

By following these smart tactics, you can reduce cloud waste at your business as well as optimize your cloud spending. This helps you save money. You can also improve operational efficiency and environmental sustainability.

Are you struggling with expanding cloud costs? Need help identifying and removing cloud waste? Our team of cloud experts can help you.

Contact us today to schedule your assessment.


Featured Image Credit

This Article has been Republished with Permission from The Technology Press.

Send a quick message

Looking for help on your next project?  Send us a message for a no hassle chat.

Sherpa Digital are a leading Website Design and Management business in Melbourne.  We specialise in developing websites for small and medium sized businesses, as well as providing WordPress Maintenance plans and hosting, SEO, Email Marketing and Automation, as well as IT Services for Small and Medium Businesses.

What Our Clients Think

We are very fortunate to have formed excellent partnerships with many of our clients. Here’s what they’re saying about us.

Melanie PayetMelanie Payet
01:41 28 Feb 22
I cant thank James from Sherpa Digital for creating my business website. Not only does it look amazing, James service was 100% fantastic. If your looking for a professional website, look no further and give James a call, you wont be disappointed. Not only is James prompt to replying,he is an easy down to earth guy to work with.
Paula DunnPaula Dunn
01:25 11 Oct 21
There are many in the digital space who claim to be experienced, quality driven professionals, and then there are those who are truly professional, approachable and solution driven. My experience with Sherpa Digital is that of quality, perseverance and solutions that have been tailored to my needs. I highly recommend Sherpa Digital and will continue to use them for all of my digital development needs going forward.
Philippa YoungPhilippa Young
23:18 10 Oct 21
Working with James at Sherpa Digital has been a fantastic experience. Starting with a clear plan and quote, through to the final product it was a smooth and streamlined project. James was always available to discuss any questions, and nothing was too much trouble. James was professional, knowledgeable, flexible and solution focused. I would strongly recommend James for your website and IT needs.
Ness JollyNess Jolly
22:38 24 Jun 21
Thanks for your great work James.I have to say that your professionalism, punctuality and responsiveness to meet our needs is a breath of fresh air.
Elysia ElElysia El
01:18 11 Mar 21
If I could give James six stars I would. I needed some help on a tricky website over the Christmas break and he was helpful, friendly, supportive and responsive – he was happy to explain anything that I didn't understand well (in a non-geeky way). Beyond the knowledge and skills, his interpersonal skills and rapport is great.
js_loader

Call us today on 1300 868 174 for a quick and easy chat about your website or IT needs, or drop us a message through our online enquiry form