Multi-Cloud Cost Control – Managing a Multi-Cloud Infrastructure

By the end of 2020, approximately 60% of businesses had moved their work to the cloud with 90% of those companies using multiple providers to support their needs. However, the complexity in monitoring costs of a multi-cloud infrastructure can be disastrous if you don’t take one significant step.

By using multiple cloud providers, companies can reduce their dependency on any one platform in the event of loss of service while simultaneously taking advantage of each provider’s performance strengths. However, with the advantages of using multiple cloud providers comes an increased complexity in monitoring costs. Spending on public cloud services is forecasted to grow 18.4% in 2021, totaling $304.9 billion.

One challenge many companies struggle with is overspending on underutilized resources – inactive instances or computes that have yet to be rightsized. As your cloud ecosystem grows, your investment in resources to understand your cost and usage reports will grow as well.

$0
Billion

forecasted cloud spend in 2021

18%

forecasted cloud spend growth in 2021

60%

of companies that have moved to the cloud

90%

of companies use multiple clouds

Multi-Cloud Infrastructure Done Right

When utilized strategically, the benefits of a multi-cloud system are second to none. Cloud computing allows smaller companies to have access to the same technologies as larger enterprises without having to invest in an on-premise data center.

The cloud is extremely accessible and allows for better collaboration in an increasingly remote world. Employees can access company documents and applications via the internet versus having to store everything locally. The cloud also allows for faster deployment of workloads and applications. By utilizing one or more public cloud resources, the need to plan and build out IT infrastructure is eliminated and cloud-based services can be deployed in a matter of days, sometimes hours.

Multi-Cloud Cost Control – The Right Moves

A few ways to make a multi-cloud infrastructure work for you:

  • Reduce redundancy by increasing visibility. Map the existing cloud infrastructure to understand relationships between vendors, departments, business needs, and cloud services being utilized.

  • With an overwhelming number of options to choose from (AWS alone has 90+ cloud services to choose from) it’s imperative to analyze your vendor options and choose the right service for your business needs.

Prevent unknown cost increases/surprises:

  • Cloud services will remain active and accumulate costs even when idle. Keep an active watch on all services and consolidate ones being underutilized.

  • Deactivate unused resources. A temporary server or resources that were once attached to an instance will remain active and drive up costs even when no longer in use.

  • Consider reserved instances vs on-demand services for resources if you plan to utilize for longer terms (often 1 to 3-year commitments).

Improve accountability of your technical team’s cloud spend:

Consider tagging all resources and instances by department. If teams take ownership of their spend, they’ll be more mindful of their cloud usage. Creating a culture of cost awareness via increased accountability will also encourage teams to use resources more efficiently when designing solutions.

The Multi-Cloud Cost Management dashboard developed by the Smartbridge Data & Analytics practice has taken the guess work out of how to efficiently manage these resources in a centralized environment.

Sources: Gartner | Flexera

Explore our Multi-Cloud Cost Management solution on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace

Keep Reading: Hybrid Cloud vs Multi-Cloud

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