Best Practices for Reducing and Managing Cloud Spend

In our “Managing and Understanding On-Premises and Cloud Spend” survey from 2018 a top concern for the respondents when it came to using the cloud was the high costs associated with it – at 43 percent of survey respondents.

In our recent 2019 predictions blog we noted that the number one question organizations would need to conquer this year is, “What does moving to the cloud really mean for your business?” The visibility across the entire software estate – be it on-premises or in the cloud – is severely lacking and causing upwards of 30 percent waste for most organizations when it comes to software spend.

Yet, Gartner has laid out that over $1.3 trillion in IT spending will be impacted by organizations shifting spend to the cloud resulting in 28 percent of enterprise spend moving to the cloud by 2022 (up 19% from last year). See table 1.

So we know there is a lack of visibility into what is being used and spend on the cloud but cloud spending is definitely not slowing down – what can organizations do to protect themselves from cloud overspend in the near and long-term?

There are a few key areas that organizations can focus on that may help reign in cloud costs – but these are typically not a long-term solution – including:

• Shutting down what the IT world terms “zombie assets” (typically data bases that are no longer in use)
• Right sizing and scheduling VMs to ensure they are not being used in off hours or built too large in the first place

These are a good start but are simply a band-aid on what is really a larger issue – lack of visibility and accurate data into what is going on in your cloud environment in the first place.

This is where SoftwareONE’s PyraCloud platform can provide an accurate picture of your entitlement, inventory and consumption when it comes to the cloud. Most importantly, PyraCloud turns what often feels like an intangible asset into a tangible, measurable asset that is optimized for its specific use for your organization.

PyraCloud provides you with a single platform to gain visibility into your multi-cloud environment from IaaS to SaaS. It allows organizations to discover, track and allocate cloud resources and cloud spend back to specific business units and cost centers – bringing cloud resources and cloud spend to the forefront rather than lost in the ether, if you will.

In addition, PyraCloud continues to evolve as customer’s cloud needs evolve – our most recent enhancement is that of the Procurement Workbench which provides procurement specialists a single view into all software purchases – be it on-premises or in the cloud – in order to streamline purchases as well as keep track of the various software purchases.

SoftwareONE understands the complexity behind moving to the cloud and will work with you to help you manage and control your spend in the cloud so that you can focus on optimizing your business processes – the entire point of moving to the cloud in the first place. Contact us today.