In our previous article, we explored fundamental concepts like right-sizing, pay-as-you-go models, cost allocation, and resource budgeting — all critical for effective cloud cost management. Now, in this second part of our series, we're taking a step further into the realm of advanced strategies, aiming to help you maximize your cloud savings even more.
Linking cloud costs to business goals lets companies manage their money based on how much profit they're getting back. It also lets companies track how cost increases and savings affect their business. Understanding this crucial link between expenditure and outcomes sets the stage for a deeper exploration. With that foundational knowledge in place, let's look at advanced strategies that can optimize your cloud savings even more.
Advanced Strategies for Financial Agility
- Commitment Discounts
Commitment discounts, known as CUDs, present valuable cost-saving options in enterprise cloud plans. By committing to long-term usage, businesses can achieve substantial savings on VM instances and computing resources. These discounts are available when you agree to use a specific amount of resources over a set period, offering more affordable rates. They are particularly beneficial for operations that consistently require substantial resources.
Choosing Reserved Instances, simplifies the prediction of future costs, thereby streamlining the budgeting process. This approach allows you to align your cloud spend with actual usage needs, ensuring that you are capitalizing on the full benefits of CUD deals. If your in-house resources are limited in this area, partnering with a company that specializes in analyzing usage trends, like Cloudride, can provide crucial support and insights.
- Automating Cost Optimization
Automation can be used in different ways to help lower cloud costs. The best tools are AWS Instance Scheduler, AWS Cost Explorer, and AWS Anomaly Detector for cost monitoring. Automation assists in tasks such as analyzing costs, forecasting budgets, and tracking expenses in real-time, offering a more streamlined approach to financial management.
Another advantage of automation is its ability to provide deeper insights for cloud cost savings. Many tools are equipped to respond automatically under certain conditions, helping teams to maintain their budgets and achieve their financial objectives. This helps teams stay within budget and on track for success. With these tools, you can spot and terminate resource wastage in a matter of a few clicks, enhancing overall efficiency.
Implementing automation by utilizing native cloud capabilities has been shown to significantly reduce costs, sometimes by as much as 40%. This approach not only leads to better resource allocation but also improves scalability and the resilience of applications, demonstrating a clear impact on operational success.
- Enterprise Agreement Negotiation
Talk to your provider. Focus on your specific needs and the desire for a lasting partnership. The agreement for cloud services needs to include assurances regarding price increases. Ideally, you should be able to secure your costs and fees if you sign a multi-year deal. If that's not feasible, at least aim for a predetermined cap on potential price increases.
AWS presents the Amazon Web Services Enterprise Discount Program (AWS EDP), a program designed for financial savings tailored for substantial business cloud users committed to long-term usage. This program offers straightforward discounts on AWS costs, making it a good choice for businesses trying to reduce their cloud expenses.
Trough the AWS EDP, AWS fosters enduring customer relationships. It's designed to benefit consistent, high-volume users over extended periods, aligning long-term usage with financial incentives.
- Optimization of Data Transfer and Storage
A materialized view can help reduce the amount of data transferred between your data warehouse and reporting layers. This happens as a result of computing queries being preprocessed in advance. Materialized views are very helpful in expediting frequent and repeatable queries. Don't forget to archive infrequently used data and reduce its size using compression methods for more efficient storage.
By staying ready and flexible, you ensure that the costs of data transfer and storage remain low. This approach is vital for cost-efficient cloud management. In the end, this not only helps save money but also keeps things running smoothly.
- Leveraging Spot Instances
Spot instances on EC2 allow you to bid for extra, unused capacity, allowing workloads to run at prices often substantially lower than the standard spot cost. This pricing advantage lasts until your bid surpasses the current rate. Spot instances can save considerable amounts of money compared to On-Demand instances — usually by over 90%. This approach helps you use the cloud more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Nevertheless, it’s essential to understand that Spot Instances have a trade-off - they may not always be there. They are ideal for flexible tasks that can tolerate occasional interruptions, and offer a great way to save money on idle EC2s. To maximize cost savings with Spot Instances, it's crucial to understand the specific nature of your workloads and their tolerance levels. This strategic approach helps in optimizing cloud resources while keeping expenses in check.
Further Insights and Assistance
Controlling cloud resource usage effectively demands teamwork between IT professionals and Finance departments, as previously mentioned. Strategies for managing cloud finances can be distinct across different organizations and may even vary within departments of the same company. We trust that these two articles have offered valuable guidance and actionable strategies, empowering you to optimize your cloud investments and financial management.
For tailored support and expert guidance tailored to your unique situation, Cloudride is here to assist. Our team of FinOps experts specializes in helping you navigate cloud cost control and maximize the efficiency of your cloud operations. Contact us today to help you optimize your business cloud expenses.