In one of our previous blogs- How tech startups can survive the upcoming recession? We have discussed how an organization can predict if the recession’s approaching and what are the right steps to battle it. In this blog, we would completely focus on how you can control and even minimize your cloud costs in such an economic hardship situation.
The global economy has seen a dip as a result of the recession. Naturally, this would imply that companies all around the world would begin to reduce their expenditure on everything. So, how does all of this affect the IT sector, particularly the cloud segment? Right now, the cloud is seeing robust demand and revenue growth, but a recession might change that.
Companies of all sizes should prepare now for this economic downturn by developing an effective data management strategy. This means creating a plan that addresses how data will be protected, stored, backed up, and archived over the next few years.
Though the recession has not been a major factor in affecting costs yet, if it becomes severe then it will drastically affect the budget, investment, resources, costs, and performance of the IT industries. We all know that “Prevention is better than Cure,” so here are 5 Methods to Control Cloud Costs in the Ongoing Recession:
- Opt for a substitute cloud: Alternative providers typically don’t offer the breadth of services as the big public clouds, but they usually offer one or two services in which they’re experts. The key is to determine which type of cloud is most likely to offer the best value for your unique workload. For example, one provider might specialize in offering high-performance dedicated hosting for critical applications. Another might focus on offering low cost for data storage.
- Monitor your cloud spending insights: Keep an eye on your cloud expenses and your cloud bills and start regularly monitoring them. Start considering alternative services for the same which are affordable and can provide the same performance nonetheless. For example, if you are paying a high price for storage, consider whether you need to keep all of your data in the cloud. There may be some data that you can store on a private server at a lower cost.
- Cold Storage for Data: Keeping data in “cold” storage, where data is less accessible but also costs less to store, makes more sense when the business has to think about keeping costs down for the long term. Cold storage is typically used for backup and disaster recovery purposes. Cold storage is not appropriate for all types of data. Moving more data to cold storage tiers, on the other hand, can cut total expenses.
- Shut down non-functioning resources: There might be some resources that are not even running but still consume a lot of data. Find such types of resources and shut them down immediately. You can either do this manually(not preferred) or use specific automated tools. For example, AWS has a variety of metrics you can use to identify idle instances, such as average CPU load, average memory load, or the number of hours without instance usage. With the right metrics, you can set up automated shutdown rules to shut down instances when load averages fall below a threshold for a certain amount of time.
- Well-coordinated and planned working ecosystem: IT managers are more likely to make impromptu decisions in the absence of a clear corporate overview plan when they should be investing their efforts in connecting IT goals with broader business goals. Close working connections between managers of different fields are crucial for the health of the organization, especially during a crisis. The company’s management may then examine what it has and what it needs.
- Disaster Recovery Options: If money wasn’t an issue then most firms would have opted for the multi-site/active disaster recovery option due to its zero downtime and its ability to operate on the same workload from any region, but this option is the most expensive. It doubles your hosting expenditures making it difficult for the company to cope with the situation. Therefore the company should understand the situation and revert to the other disaster recovery options and choose accordingly. AWS provides a variety of other disaster recovery options that you can look out for.
- Refrain from making any new IT investments: Companies can aim to achieve economies of scale by utilizing their existing IT skills, talents, assets, and infrastructure rather than investing large sums in purchasing new frameworks and resources that are well outside of budgets and recruiting a larger and larger staff. This means exploring the potential of your current resources and team members and making the most out of it. Furthermore, all existing IT transactions and outsourcing must be postponed for an extended length of time.
Another term that we would like to bring to the spotlight is “FinOps”, a term that was created between Finance and DevOps, which is a financial management practice to control your cloud costs and maximize business value.
FinOps can improve the agility of your company by making your IT infrastructure more flexible and enabling you to scale up and down your IT spending with ease. In the FinOps model, IT is viewed as a differentiator that can give your organization a competitive edge. By optimizing your IT spending, you can reinvest savings back into research and development, speeding up the delivery of new products and services.
Besides improving agility, it can also improve operational efficiency. A solid return on investment may still be possible even during tough economic times. Visibility and control are key to implementing a successful FinOps strategy. If a typical business wants to integrate AI into its operations, it must spend significant time and resources to get it up and running. Fortunately, the FinOps model can help businesses bridge the gap between their AI efforts and the day-to-day operations of their businesses.
Well, you can’t find a one-stop solid solution to this problem but at least you can experiment and try out several actions to keep track of wasteful expenditure in cloud settings. And, as we stand on the verge of a recession, there has never been a better opportunity to implement cloud cost optimization measures.
Cloud computing is here to stay. With more businesses turning to the cloud, it’s important to have a plan that takes into account how you’re going to use the cloud, what you’re going to use it for, and how you’ll ensure that you make the most of the resources it offers to you.
You don’t want to miss out on this highly affordable and flexible IT service that can help you save money while providing you with more flexibility, scalability, and security than ever before.
But regardless of which cloud service you choose, it’s important to remember that a company’s success is dependent on making smart decisions about its data and resources. Cloud costs are only going to get more significant as the cloud continues to grow in importance.