Every growing company faces the challenge of rising cloud costs sooner or later.

The main problem in the operation of the cloud is that the needs of each application and its workload change over time, and the cloud requires additional optimization to work correctly.

All this affects the inefficient operation of the cloud and high monetary costs for its maintenance.

Usually, more than 50% of companies overpay for the work of the cloud.

The cloud operates efficiently when the cost of maintenance is properly balanced against the performance of the workload and with the most appropriate real-time infrastructure. At the same time, the system must fully comply with the requirements.

The application starts to perform better when it is dynamically mapped to the cloud application. In this case, the application gives maximum efficiency for the money spent on it.

If you’re just beginning your cloud migration journey, check out our detailed guide on Cloud Migration Challenges to gain a thorough understanding of the process.

Cloud types and properties

The cloud infrastructure model provides undeniable advantages – building and maintaining a corporate IT infrastructure, protection, business continuity and disaster recovery.

The cloud is used for different purposes and in different areas of business. The purpose of the cloud can be software development and testing, the creation of IT sites, data backup services, data analysis, disaster recovery services, email and virtual desktops.

There are 3 main types of cloud services:

infrastructure as a service (IaaS);
platform as a service (PaaS);
Software as a service (SaaS).

As an infrastructure as a service, virtual networks or virtual servers with a given capacity and storage can act. On them, the client can install software and applications of his choice.

A platform as a service is usually a web server or database where a client controls a given program or operating system.

In the case of SaaS, the client manages the given software with the specified settings. It can be email or some office application.

There are 3 types of clouds in total:

A public cloud is a cloud that makes its cloud computing services available to anyone who wants to purchase them. The advantage of such a cloud is that the provider will take responsibility for the maintenance and management of the cloud. This saves on the administration and maintenance of hardware and application infrastructure.
Private cloud is focused on a limited number of users. Often it is used within organizations only for their employees. The advantage of a private cloud is its high confidentiality and security, while the management and administration of such a cloud is carried out manually. This means that you will have to hire specialized employees to manage a private cloud.
A hybrid cloud is an environment that combines on-premises infrastructure, private cloud services, and the public cloud.

How cloud optimization works

In cloud optimization, the main task is to minimize the cash costs of the cloud while improving or maintaining the quality of the cloud service.

This can be done through a number of IT operations. CloudOps and DevOps are the two main operations through which cloud optimization is carried out.

Common Ways to Optimize Cloud Applications

Using tools to optimize cloud spending. These include third-party software and provider-provided clouds. Both options are good because they allow you to optimize cloud costs;

Manual cloud optimization with the help of a specialist or a contracted organization.
The main disadvantage of manual optimization is the high time and money costs, because. a more advantageous solution would be to install intelligent software that will automatically clearly understand what resources the application really needs and will be able to easily determine what exactly is required.

Cloud expense reporting – provides deep analytics, accounting for cloud expenses, reporting and identifying anomalies in billing.

Ways to reduce cloud costs:

Choosing a cheaper supplier of equipment and services;
Using virtualization;
Savings through reduced hardware capacity;

Savings on current operations (implemented through automation, hiring cheaper staff, compacting the schedule of current staff);

One of the main operations of cloud optimization is its automation. It helps keep cloud services and application needs in sync.

Cloud automation includes:

Machine learning;
Artificial Intelligence;

Machine learning and artificial intelligence make it easy to optimize your cloud infrastructure.

These and many other ways of cloud optimization can be found in the cloud optimization services. They will help reduce costs and increase the efficiency and profitability of your company.