In 2020, businesses are more dependent on the cloud than ever before, and the pandemic is one reason why.
The widespread force of COVID-19 this year has had a tremendous impact on businesses around the world. The pandemic has driven a large number of organizations to accelerate their cloud migration process. In fact, a recent survey conducted by 2nd Watch showed that 59% of top-100 IT directors planned an increase of their cloud budgets within the next 12 months, with 34% out of those planning to accelerate their move to the cloud.
But what about the new costs?
The real costs of cloud migration tend to stay less transparent. And with the current coronavirus situation, a majority of software-dependent businesses are now forced to adapt to new changes, such as working from home.
Unsurprisingly, these changes have in fact brought unprecedented demand to large cloud service providers like Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and AWS.
A question begs to be asked: how precisely did the current pandemic manage to alter the use of cloud services and the development of cloud technology in general?
Safety concerns around the globe urged governments and communities to implement new policies such as the infamous social distancing, closures of public spaces, and work-at-home mandates, among others. These new rules resulted in an increased demand for all sorts of at-home activities, including remote work and e-learning (let’s not forget TV binge-watching as well!).
Microsoft and Zoom are two examples of companies that currently witness a massive boost in usage across North America, Europe, and Asia, all due to the pandemic. The situation looks promising, as there are forecasts of continuous growth of the demand for cloud services.
And as the demand increases, so do costs. The established norms now call for a higher level of scalable, secure, and reliable cloud technology.
Companies are currently not only leaning on the cloud more than ever before, but are also looking to manage the incurred expenses that come with the increased usage.
As you might have already guessed, we are dedicating this post to discussing some of the ways businesses can successfully optimize their cloud expenses during the coronavirus.
Save On Discounts
As organizations move their increased volumes of workload to cloud computing, several challenges arise, first and foremost being financial uncertainty.
Cloud providers are notorious for offering great discounts, ranging from saving plans to reserved instances, but be wary. Discounts are tied to commitment contracts, so make sure you evaluate your usage goals before you commit. Otherwise, you might find yourself locked in with too much cloud spend. Make sure to read more about reducing your cloud waste in this post of ours.
Save On Infrastructure
Invest your time into closely tracking your company’s utilization of memory, storage, and CPU for your systems over a certain period of time, be it a month or more. Once you have a better understanding of your actual cloud usage, you can go ahead and seize your infrastructure based on it.
Gathering utilization data before migration also helps to eliminate unneeded instances.
Save On Software Licenses
A great strategy that helps to eliminate unneeded resources within a company’s cloud environment is called “rightsizing”. This process involves continuously analyzing your instance performance, to later get rid of any overprovisioned instances that your workload could do without. Rightsizing is especially needed now, as this simple approach helps businesses save big on their cloud expenses.
Eliminating instances costs would also get rid of any unneeded software licenses costs. Be sure to understand all implications of software licensing during your move to the cloud, to avoid getting into restrictions that might potentially increase your costs in the long term.
Save With The Best Cloud Providers and Regions
Take your time to analyze and compare various cloud providers. (Take a look at this Clouve’s blog post that compares costs of cloud migration between Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud).
Pay close attention to geographical region options for each cloud provider during your search, to determine the optimal rates for your workloads. Conducting this analysis will also hopefully thoroughly prepare you for pricing negotiations with said cloud providers.
CONCLUSION
The global pandemic has certainly changed the face of everything. And with great changes come great risks. Luckily for us, technology makes it possible to prosper even in the most unprecedented times. Although the sudden burst of cloud usage has left businesses with high costs, there are always strategies a company might use to ensure current changes don’t take a significant toll on its wallet.
Are you planning to migrate your workload to the cloud, but have no idea where to begin? Let Clouve do the heavy lifting for you! Our experts take the load off your shoulders by helping you plan and find the best cost-effective options for your cloud migration.
Talk to us today and see for yourself!
