How to finally meet your cost objectives in the cloud

Migrating to the cloud offers many benefits for an organization, including  increased efficiency, security and stability for many technology functions. But once an organization has made the move to the cloud, it’s critical to keep a close eye on ongoing costs. According to a recent Pulse/InterVision study, 92 percent of technology leaders and executives say their organizations expect technology teams to operate with a cloud-first approach, but 45 percent were either unsure about or not meeting their cost objectives in the cloud.

Skepticism towards the cloud will only continue to increase if costs cannot be controlled. To avoid this unfortunate trend, businesses should have certain tools in their arsenals like AWS and a trusted strategic service provider.

Optimize efforts with AWS

Cloud migration is not an easy task, especially if an organization’s technology efforts are archaic. This transformation requires a lot of hands on deck and it’s important to have knowledgeable cloud experts, like AWS, on your side. An organization should determine the total picture of average cost savings for cloud computing before the journey ever begins. The process starts by calculating the baseline spend for existing infrastructure to provide an accurate comparison of the cost-to-value for the cloud.

The adoption of AWS cloud can empower a business, but if not deployed correctly, it can also drag a business down and dramatically increase costs. The determining factor is reliant on how the technology team decides to strategize and execute on its AWS cloud migration, setting the tone for how to optimize AWS in the future. It is true that most organizations will not immediately cut costs when they move to the AWS cloud, which is a common misunderstanding among business and technology professionals alike. Instead, the solution to cost savings in the cloud can be found in three areas: architecture, financial optimization and governance.

AWS offers saving plans that allow organizations to fully optimize the cloud and take their business to the next level. There are pricing models within the AWS Saving Plans that give users the option to use all AWS resources in the most cost-effective way. These pricing models include On-Demand, Spot Instances, Reserved Instances and Savings Plans. Clients who are looking to lower costs should first leverage native AWS tools meant for the specific optimization of cloud resources, versus allowing for runaway storage or computing costs.

Find a trusted partner

For businesses looking to meet their cost objectives in the cloud, there are critical decisions that must be made early on. It is important to be strategic in the beginning phases as those decisions impact the organization’s entire cloud journey, directly affect technical debt, and organizational skepticism around the cloud. To ease the process, organizations should look to utilize cloud-managed services for assistance and expert advice.

These experts partner with organizations to create and execute technology solutions and services that can achieve short-term wins and have a deep impact on the long-term strategy as well. The success of a business’s cloud migration is greatly influenced by the relationship between the organization and cloud service provider. For example, a managed service partner may advise an organization to first invest in Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) to AWS as the beginning step in its cloud journey. CIOs, CTOs, and other technology leaders feel the pressure to showcase early cloud wins to help earn stakeholders’ buy-in  for a complete migration. DRaaS has become an ideal option for demonstrating that the cloud can be a successful driver for the business even in the early stages. Perhaps the biggest benefit of using DRaaS in the cloud is that it encourages cloud-hesitant technology team members to learn the ropes of the AWS environment in a non-critical scenario, allowing them to gain confidence in their cloud skills and knowledge before a full migration.

Can the cloud save your organization money? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is it depends upon the foundation you’ve empowered in the cloud for the rest of the business to operate. A large portion of the foundation and success of the cloud are closely related to the amount of money spent. There will be more frustration and a negative outlook towards the cloud if an organization spends more than expected early on in the process -- it will be set up for failure.

Businesses should look to AWS and a strategic service provider to avoid this challenge. With this expertise, organizations can finally meet their cost objectives in the cloud and take their cloud migration, and most importantly their businesses, to new heights.

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Dustin Milberg is a seasoned enterprise technology executive and current Field CTO Cloud Services at InterVision, a leading technology strategic service provider and Premier Consulting Partner in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN). In this role, Dustin focuses on helping customers adopt a holistic approach to developing and delivering sustainable platforms and solutions while enabling technology organizations to optimize the entire operation: people, process, infrastructure, operations, development, quality, and security.