IT and finance battle for control of cloud spending

A tug-of-war between finance and cloud leaders is preventing enterprises from controlling their cloud spending, according to new research.

The study from Vertice, of 600 senior finance and tech leaders in the US and UK, shows cutting cloud spending is revealed as the number one cost-saving priority for over a third of finance leaders, but only nine percent of technical leaders say that managing cloud costs is a top concern.

Over a third (34 percent) of tech and finance leaders disagree on their approach to cloud spending. 41 percent of finance leaders say the main cause of friction is a lack of transparency from tech leaders, whereas 55 percent of tech leaders say that non-technical staff don't have the right knowledge or expertise to understand cloud investments. 25 percent of tech bosses say that finance staff want to reduce cloud spending, but they don't have the tech or engineering resources to focus on cloud optimisation.

Friction is most acute in scale-up environments, with leaders reporting almost twice the level of friction than inside enterprise-sized organisations. In addition 50 percent of organisations struggle to scale cloud usage efficiently as they grow.

Eldar Tuvey, CEO and co-founder of Vertice says:

Reducing cloud spending is a growing challenge for businesses of all sizes, so it's concerning to see the disconnect between finance and tech leaders. With companies grappling with volatile cloud bills and costs rising by as much as 500 percent in a single year for some organisations, it’s critical for CFOs and CIOs to have a unified strategy for cloud cost optimisation. CFOs are demanding access to accurate forecasting, with shared visibility and automation tools to help them act on cost-saving initiatives. This is of course critical for all companies who are struggling to scale their cloud efficiently, as they grow.

There are over 200 AWS products alone, which makes managing and reducing cloud spending complex and time-consuming. Automating cloud cost optimisation leads to bigger savings of time and money, and frees up resources for growth and innovation. We are excited by the prospect of helping our customers save up to 25 percent on their cloud costs.

Saving money on cloud is the highest priority among finance leaders, with more than three quarters (78 percent) of them listing it among their top three and a third (33.5 percent) revealing it as their number one cost-saving priority.

Tech decision-makers are most concerned with cloud recruitment -- with four out of in 10 (40 percent) saying their key priority is hiring skilled cloud employees.

Vertice is launching its cloud cost optimization platform to help businesses control their cloud spending.

Image credit: Vertice