In a recent survey of IT decision-makers by technology company Boomi, 72% of respondents revealed that their companies went over their allocated cloud budgets in the last fiscal year.
The study identified several factors contributing to the rising cloud costs, such as excessive storage, overuse of network bandwidth, and a lack of integration strategy.
Here are 12 tips you can implement to address the factors raised in the survey and keep costs down:
Excessive Data Storage?
1) Data Lifecycle Management:
Old and disorganized data can lead to increased storage costs, as well as expose organizations to security breaches and compliance risks. In order to prevent such a thing from happening, your team should create and implement a data lifecycle management policy to identify and delete outdated or redundant data.
IT teams can begin with a thorough assessment of the current data landscape, identifying the types of data stored, their locations, usage patterns, and regulatory requirements. By understanding the existing data environment and its complexities, IT teams can then proceed to define clear data lifecycle stages and establish a solid data governance framework, laying the groundwork for effective and compliant data management practices moving forward.
2) Data Compression and Deduplication:
Use data compression and deduplication techniques to reduce the amount of storage space required for your data without compromising on data integrity.
For example, you should utilize common compression algorithms like Lempel-Ziv-Welch, Deflate and LZ4 and make sure you monitor compression ratios and adjust as needed to achieve optimal results. And for deduplication, you should target either file-level, block-level or inline deduplication based on the data characteristics and storage environment in your organization.
3) Utilize Cost-Effective Storage Options:
Leverage cost-effective storage options like cold storage or archival storage for infrequently accessed data, while using standard or high-performance storage for frequently accessed data.
4) Regularly Monitor and Audit Your Storage Usage:
Continuously monitor and audit your storage usage to identify any anomalies or areas where storage can be optimized further.
To get started you should set threshold alerts, classify data based on its sensitivity/importance, use metadat tagging to track storage, and track key performance stats like latency, throughput, and IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second).
Overuse of Network Bandwidth?
5) Implement Content Delivery Networks (CDNs):
Use CDNs to cache content closer to end-users, reducing the need for data to traverse long distances and minimizing bandwidth usage. CDNs can also help your team improve load balancing and security protocols (like WAF and SSL/TLS encryption)
6) Optimize Data Transfer and Egress:
Minimize unnecessary data transfers and egress by implementing data caching, compression, and by using efficient data transfer protocols like FTP, SFTP, SCP or HTTPS over your network(s).
7) Implement Network Traffic Shaping and QoS Policies:
Use network traffic shaping and Quality of Service (QoS) policies to prioritize critical traffic and limit bandwidth usage for non-essential applications or services.
QoS mechanisms such as traffic shaping and congestion management help regulate traffic flows, smooth out network congestion, and prevent network bottlenecks, enhancing overall network stability and reliability, which in turn provides a positive knock-on effect in user experience.
8) Monitor and Analyze Network Traffic:
Continuously monitor and analyze network traffic patterns to identify bandwidth-intensive applications or services and optimize them accordingly. If you can find a tool that collects smart endpoint data and user sentiment than you’ll be sure to save big.
Lack of Cloud Integration?
9) Adopt Integration Platforms and Middleware:
Use integration platforms and middleware solutions to facilitate seamless communication and data exchange between different systems, applications, and cloud services.
Specifically, middleware can can improve several factors including interoperability and standards compliance with protocols like HTTP, REST, SOAP and messaging standards like JMS, AMQP, and MQTT.
10) Implement API Management:
Establish robust API management practices to standardize integrations, ensure security, and enable easier integration between disparate systems and services.
11) Leverage Cloud Native Integration Services:
Utilize cloud-native integration services offered by cloud providers to simplify and streamline integrations between cloud-based and on-premises systems.
Most cloud providers offer a pay-as-you-go pricing model which help eliminate the need for upfront investments in hardware, software licenses, and infrastructure, reducing capital expenses and aligning costs with actual usage.
12) Develop Integration Standards and Best Practices:
Define and enforce integration standards and best practices across the organization to ensure consistency, reliability, and efficiency in integration efforts.
Putting in the work to have an integration framework can help minimize maintenance costs and troubleshooting time, lower the risk of errors, tickets, and compatibility issues, and a host of other problems.
Reeling it in
By proactively addressing these specific challenges with targeted strategies and solutions, IT departments can effectively reduce cloud costs while improving performance, scalability, and reliability across their cloud environments.
