By answering these 14 questions, you will maximize the outcomes of your cloud cost optimization.
Cloud cost optimization is a MUST-DO for every organization. Without proper cloud cost optimization, you will lose money.
Agree?
But how can you make sure you maximize the outcomes of the cost optimization activities?
By answering the below 14 questions, you will maximize the outcomes of your cloud cost optimization activities.
Do you have the right tooling? is one of the questions. With the multi cloud cost management tool of C-Facts you will reduce your cloud waste and maximize the business outcomes of your cloud computing.
1 – Which value streams deliver the most value?
Just cutting costs doesn’t make sense. You want to cut costs on projects where the investments don’t deliver enough business value. On projects that deliver business value, you don’t want to cut costs. Maybe you even want to invest more.
Cutting costs on resources that aren’t needed is always what you want, so make sure you have a good overview of that.
2 – What kind of governance do you have in place to manage your cloud costs?
If you don’t organize the management of your cloud costs, you will lose money. Make sure you have set up a governance structure to maximize the business outcomes of cloud computing. FinOps is an often-used cultural practice to manage cloud costs. Creating centralized governance for selecting cloud providers, negotiating contracts, defining best practices, etc. will certainly help.
Many companies are surprised about new internal solutions that use new cloud providers. Make sure you are not one of these surprised companies by taking control of cloud delivery.
3 – What do you do to create a more cost-conscious culture?
Being successful as a company is all about people. Managing your cloud costs is also about people. Teams need to benefit from cloud computing for the advantages like; flexibility, speed, innovation, etc. Make sure they can include managing the related costs.
Cloud is pay-per-use. You only pay for it if you use (need?) it. But the practice is that resources are started, but not stopped. Creating a more cost-conscious culture will help to reduce this kind of cloud waste. In such a culture it is also normal to ask to report about the cloud costs, the optimizations, etc. So don’t forget that.
Sharing top- and bottom-line will help teams to understand the impact of their cloud costs on the overall results.
4 – What kind of (automated) procedures do you have in place to monitor cloud costs from the beginning?
A cost-conscious culture is not enough. You need to make sure you automate certain processes, so you enforce the control of your cloud costs. Using tagging when starting resources is one of those things you need to do, so you know who uses which resource for what.
5 – How do you allocate the cloud costs to business entities?
Allocation of resources and so costs to business entities like applications, departments, projects will help teams to take ownership of their cost. As long as you know who manages which cloud costs, you know who you can talk to.
6 – Which processes are in place to execute the activities for cloud cost optimization?
You want to get insights on your cloud spend, so you can gain control and start optimizing. Only mentioning that people need to do it won’t work. Make sure you have processes and procedures in place to do this, including checking this. Then you will make sure you will reduce your cloud waste.
7 – Which processes do have in place to monitor the execution and outcomes of cloud cost optimization activities?
Checking the activities of cloud optimization and the outcomes will make sure people will do this. Especially if you give them compliments about their good results.
8 – Do you only use resources if you need them?
How do you make sure you only use resources that you really need? Do you daily switch off all resources that aren’t tagged? Do you use infrastructure as code, so you only have to run a script to ramp up new resources? Make sure you have measures in place to only use what you need.
9 – Do you cover both usage and licenses in your activities?
The usage of cloud resources is one part. Don’t forget to manage the licenses as well. The licenses cost money as well and need to be managed.
10 – What is your time-to-insights on your cloud cost hypotheses?
How long does it take to get insights into your cloud data? The faster you have insights, the faster you can make business decisions. Reducing the time to insights is crucial operating in a competitive market. Make sure you have the right tooling to reduce the time-to-insights.
11 – Do your resources have the right sizing in relation to the load
Do you use the right sizing of your resources like databases, VM’s, storage, and licenses? Over-provisioning is a common cause of cloud waste. Scale down if you don’t need such a big size of the resource.
12 – Can you get a quick and accurate overview of your unassigned costs?
You know how important it is to assign cloud costs. By assigning the costs, you will have an accountable person that will manage the costs. Then you also understand how important it is to have a quick and accurate overview of the unassigned costs.
You don’t have a person managing these costs, or you don’t charge these costs. Organize this!
13 – Do you have the right tooling?
Your cloud spend probably increases yearly and is already a substantial amount. Only with the right tooling, you will make sure you can get insights fast and manage your costs efficiently. Managing your cloud cost with only the native cloud cost management solutions is not enough. Using a spreadsheet is not efficient, reliable, and isn’t sufficient for your continuity.
14 – Do you make use of discounts where possible?
Make sure you know your contracts and make use of discounts where possible. Making use of reserved instances can help you to reduce your cloud spend.
Please also read the blog cloud cost optimization best practices.
One of the above questions is about having the right tooling. C-Facts is THE (multi) cloud cost management solution to manage your cloud costs efficiently and effectively.
Book your demo to find out how you can manage your cloud cost with the C-Facts best-of-breed solution.