07-17-17 | Blog Post
According to Rightscale, cost management is the No. 1 challenge for mature cloud users in 2017. That makes sense–after all, what’s the point of adopting hybrid cloud if it ends up being too cost prohibitive?
Different from managing your bill, this post talks about how to manage your costs within public cloud, such as Microsoft Azure.
So, why is public cloud so expensive? Well, on paper, paying pennies per minute sounds cheap, but costs quickly rise when you factor in every minute of compute used, as well as every byte for storage. And with pure public cloud or SaaS models, there is zero CAPEX cost, meaning you can buy servers as often as you like without worrying about the hardware associated with them. With a pure private cloud model, there is some hardware to consider, and you only have a finite amount of space to grow before you’re out of room. Then you have to invest the thousands of dollars in new hardware–not something you can just tack on to your budget.
If you run a hybrid cloud, chances are you use both public and private clouds, or possibly multiple public clouds. How can you manage the costs associated with these models? Below are three ways to do so:
Cost management is one of the major concerns enterprises face in hybrid cloud adoption, so it’s important to take control of your environment as soon as possible. There are tools to help you manage it yourself, but you could also seek a managed provider who will help you monitor it personally and give you more detailed analysis about your environment. Add on server tagging to organize your servers and see who is using the most, or least, of the cloud and adjust your budget as needed for true cost optimization.