Manage It Right With Cloud Cost Management Software

Cloud cost management (also known as cloud cost optimization) is the organizational planning that allows an enterprise to understand and manage its cloud costs. In particular, it entails finding cost-effective ways to maximize cloud usage and efficiency. With cloud infrastructure becoming more complex, associated costs are more difficult to track and manage. Hence, it’s important for enterprises to employ cloud cost management strategies – just like Ben Campbell used card counting strategies.

However, unlike Ben, you don’t need to be a math prodigy! Businesses can rely on software that tracks, records, optimizes and manages cloud information for better decision-making. Presenting – Cloud Cost Management Software. Read on to understand it in detail!
 

Understanding Cloud Cost Management Software

Managing cloud costs focuses on reducing wasted efforts. Businesses need to eliminate processes that underutilize resources or consume too many cloud computing services. However, Cloud Cost Management Software goes beyond! It helps businesses reduce the wastage of resources through automated alerts, automatically scales usage based on demand and provides quick reports to summarize inadequacies and redundancies. Businesses can rely on this tool to increase the overall efficiency of their cloud services and infrastructure.

We bet some of you are thinking, we already have SaaS Management Software for our cloud applications, do we really need this? Well, SaaS management helps you monitor and manage the expenses of cloud-deployed applications but to do the same for the cloud infrastructure itself you need Cloud Cost Management Software.

Yet, just as Ben did not learn to count cards overnight, this software too was perfected over time.
 

Let’s Go Back To The Beginning Of the Cloud

 
Cloud computing forms the core of every cloud infrastructure – but you already knew that! Do you know when and why cloud computing was developed? Well, read on!
 

• In 1963, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) awarded MIT $2 million for Project MAC, with the goal of developing technology that would allow "computers to be operated by two or more persons, simultaneously." The developed model became the precursor to what we now know as cloud computing.

• In 1969, J. C. R. Licklider helped conceive the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), a primitive version of the Internet. He advocated a concept called the “Intergalactic Computer Network” which would allow everyone to be interconnected through computers and share information. Quite similar to what the cloud does today, right?

• As businesses realized the capabilities and benefits of cloud computing, it grew in popularity. In 1999, Salesforce rose to prominence as the industry pioneer in successfully delivering software to end users through the use of cloud computing. Anyone with Internet access could use the software (or application) using an on-demand model.

• In 2006, Amazon launched Amazon Web Services, offering cloud services to clients. In the same year, Google launched its Google Docs services, allowing multiple users to access cloud-hosted documents. Other cloud-based applications flooded the market.

• In 2011, the idea of hybrid clouds was introduced, allowing for interoperability between a private and public cloud, as well as the ability to transfer workloads between the two clouds. The use of cloud-based services grew exponentially.

Soon, businesses realized the need to manage and streamline their cloud operations, which included multiple applications, services and vendors. Although there were managed service providers offering robust cloud expense management, there was a demand to centralize the operation. This is how Cloud Cost Management Software came into existence!
 

How Does It All Work? Do We Need To Be Good With Numbers?

The lack of insights into cloud expenses can have considerable financial consequences such as an unforeseen rise in cloud costs, overpaying for unused resources, or even inadequate cloud ROI. Using Cloud Cost Management Software prevents this – and no, you don't need to do any math!

This solution helps businesses only pay for what they use. Thanks to its ability to granularly monitor and record cloud processes across the infrastructure, businesses can better understand cloud costs and utilization. The software gives visibility into cloud costs through informative reports and dashboards. It pulls in context and metadata from cloud environments to enrich billing reports and helps understand how costs connect with the cloud architecture. Moreover, it can drill down into cloud data and offer visibility on which services are driving which costs. If a service is not worth its cost, businesses can discontinue it or look for a cheaper alternative.

In short, Cloud Cost Management Software monitors the cloud infrastructure and usage, tracks expenses associated with cloud services and identifies costs that can be optimized.

We bet even Ben couldn't do all that! After all, the MIT blackjack team specialized in memorizing and counting cards to win big. While this software doesn’t do that, by saving cloud costs on a daily basis, you can win big in the long run.

Here are some other advantages of Cloud Cost Management Software you need to know!
 

What Are The Benefits Of Using A Cloud Cost Management Software?

We’re sure if your business uses an enterprise cloud, someone is responsible for identifying cloud costs and optimizing them. We only hope they don’t do it this way!


Here are some benefits you’ll see by investing in Cloud Cost Management Software:
 

• Lower Cloud Expenses

  The most obvious advantage of cloud cost management is that it enables organizations to plan and strategize for cloud costs proactively. It guarantees they don't overspend on resources they won't use.

• Better Predictability Of Costs

  With this solution, businesses can accurately foresee their cloud expenses as it helps us understand both present and expected costs.

• Efficient Usage Of Cloud Infrastructure

  A detailed understanding of costs aids businesses in minimizing waste and maximizing the usage of paid resources. The software offers methods such as automatic scaling and load balancing to do this.

• Better Overall Cloud Performance

  Cloud Cost Management Software makes sure that the cloud infrastructure meets your organizational needs. It assists in avoiding overprovisioning, which could result in overpaying, or under provisioning which could result in subpar performance.

• Higher Visibility Into Cloud Costs

  Businesses seek to control cloud costs effectively. The software’s analytics guarantees smarter decision-making by providing complete visibility into the organization's cloud usage and cloud architecture costs.

Did you know: the objective of card counting is to determine whether the player or the dealer has an advantage on the next hand? While Ben Campbell can tell you loads about that, we can tell you about the “next hand” of Cloud Cost Management Software – read on!
 

Ben, Can You Predict The Future Of Cloud Cost Management Software?

According to Flexera 2022: State Of The Cloud report, eighty-nine percent of respondents (large businesses) reported having a multi-cloud strategy and 80 percent are taking a hybrid approach by combining public and private clouds. Hence, a rise in the adoption of Cloud Costs Management Software is expected. The software will be developed to take into account the different aspects of both clouds while analyzing costs and building expense reports.

Moreover, the solution will become better at unit economics. That is, Cloud Cost Management Software will enable higher visibility into cloud costs incurred per customer, service or feature. Another obvious trend is that of cloud cost optimization through Artificial Intelligence (AI). The need for dynamic resource allocation will be fulfilled by monitoring and predicting cloud expenses using AI. This will also enable better visibility into future costs as businesses scale their cloud environments.

We can’t wait to further optimize cloud costs with these awesome features!
 

It’s A Wrap

As cloud infrastructure grows, businesses need to organize data from various cloud sources and analyze their entire infrastructure. Cloud Cost Management Software can provide them with a central console to view their current spending on cloud infrastructure, as well as predict future usage and costs. The software can save organizations money by identifying and mitigating over-resourcing or inefficient resource usage. These solutions can also reduce the time taken to manage and monitor cloud resources, especially for businesses using multiple cloud environments.