November 11, 2024
Cloud storage and services are often at the heart of business operations today. These services, which you purchase from a provider, come with a price tag. Additionally, the flexibility of the cloud allows you to quickly and easily acquire additional services and storage space. But is this cost-efficient? Are these extra services being used, or is there perhaps too much or too little allocated?
In this article, we will explore the possibilities for saving on your cloud services, also known as cloud cost savings.
Cloud Services: A Benefit for Your Business?
Cloud services such as public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud offer various advantages for businesses. Examples include cloud-enabled engineering and cloud-enabled testing to gain insights into your business operations. One key advantage of cloud services is cost savings. Organizations do not need to make large investments in hardware and infrastructure.
You only pay for what you use, which reduces operational costs. Additionally, cloud services increase efficiency. They are scalable, allowing you to quickly scale services up or down as needed. This flexibility enables companies to respond swiftly to changing circumstances.
Cloud Computing Cost-Saving Options
Identifying Cost-Efficient Cloud Solutions
Choosing a cloud solution is not a decision you should make hastily. The choice must fit both your current and future needs. When identifying a cost-efficient cloud solution for your business, several factors are important:
- Storage: The desired amount of storage is crucial, but the type of storage also determines how your data is organized in the cloud. Consider file storage, block storage, or object storage.
- Access Requirements: Determine who needs access to different locations within the cloud. Then, check if this distribution is possible with your chosen solution.
- Cloud Security: Identify where your business-critical data is stored and how best to protect it.
- Services: What services do you need, and which are available from vendors?
- Scalability
- Management and Monitoring Tools
Based on these criteria, you can select the right solutions to meet your needs. Tools and the expertise of a cloud advisor can be invaluable in this process.
“The continuous monitoring and optimization of a cloud environment is essential to maintain control over efficiency and costs.”
— Randy Bal, Technical Consultant IBM AIOps – Licensing, TTNL
Optimal Cloud Management
Effective cloud management monitors and optimizes your system’s performance. Monitoring the performance and usage of your cloud services allows you to identify inefficiencies, such as unused resources or redundant capacity. This ensures efficient use of your resources and helps keep costs under control.
Efficient Data Storage
Another way to reduce cloud costs is to optimize data storage. This can be achieved through strategies such as data compression, deduplication, and tiering. Regularly evaluate your data storage strategy to ensure efficiency.
Reserved Instances and Savings Plans
Reserved instances and savings plans are options offered by cloud providers to achieve long-term cost savings. With reserved instances, customers can reserve capacity for extended periods, usually one to three years, at a reduced price compared to on-demand rates. These reservations are particularly useful for predictable workloads.
Savings plans are more flexible and offer discounts on on-demand prices for a specific set of cloud services. By utilizing these options, organizations can achieve significant savings.
Using Tools for Cost Management
Various tools can help effectively manage and optimize cloud costs. Popular tools include AWS Cloud Cost Explorer, which provides insights into the costs and usage of AWS cloud services.
Another tool is Cloud Guard from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, which enables better management of data in Google apps and clouds. Azure Cost Management is a similar solution for Azure users. These tools help companies achieve transparency, control, and cost savings in their cloud environments.
In multi-cloud environments, where both Azure and AWS are used, it is advisable to use a tool that provides a consistent overview of costs.
“The cloud cost tools we offer really cover everything, from cloud spend to cloud utilization and machine placement.” “Currently, you see the use of cloud cost savings tools in enterprises, but we are slowly seeing them trickle down to smaller companies that also use cloud solutions.” “Initially, they thought the 10-15k euros in monthly cloud costs might not be much, but after three years, they see it has gotten out of hand and want to get the spend back under control.” (Derk-Jan Boon, CTO TTNL)
“Continuous monitoring and optimization of a cloud environment is essential to keep efficiency and costs under control.”
Case: Zeelandia
Zeelandia approached TTNL for a reliable solution to reduce cloud storage costs. At TTNL, we immediately knew which solution Zeelandia needed: the award-winning Hybrid Twin Data Center.
Previously, Zeelandia used software that was not only labor-intensive but also very cost-inefficient. TTNL created a Hybrid Twin Data Center for both VMware and Power infrastructure. This replaced the existing Dell and EMC solution, resulting in significantly lower costs, much higher availability, and better performance.
This change led to substantial savings in licensing costs. Additionally, the costs for staff to manage the environment were reduced.
Cloud Cost Savings with TTNL
TTNL offers various services for cloud cost savings, focused on scalability, automation, and cloud cost optimization. We help customers manage and reduce their cloud costs effectively. Our services include identifying unused resources, optimizing configurations, and utilizing cost management tools.
With our solutions, you benefit from lower costs, improved operational efficiency, and the ability to scale according to your needs. Contact TTNL for effective cloud cost management.