Clearly See Cloud Spend
Public cloud providers like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS) can be cost-effective alternatives to ongoing investment in on-premises datacenter hardware and the IT staff required to manage it. That said, there is a huge financial risk to companies that leap into public cloud services without proper planning, resource optimization, and monthly billing oversight.
With public cloud, you pay for all the resources you reserve – even if they are massively underutilized. And, since public cloud service providers make it easy for anyone to spin up an instance with a credit card, it is very easy for IT and executive management to lose control of cloud spend in a hurry. Effective public cloud cost management is imperative to ensure the proper ROI.
Public Cloud Cost Management Solutions
The first step in managing costs for public cloud spend is to eliminate sprawl by defining and communicating how public cloud resources are to be consumed across the enterprise. Although this can be a time-intensive exercise — requiring conversations and planning sessions with line-of-business (LOB) leaders from every department — the effort is worth the investment.
Upfront discussions produce a much clearer picture of how people within the business want to use technology resources to improve processes, products and services, and provides IT and executive management with better insight into the organization’s overall technology maturity. Finally, technology maturity drives a company’s ability to compete; understanding where your organization sits on this spectrum might be even more beneficial in the long run than containing cloud costs in the near term.
Plus, this process is viable even after you’ve begun to use public cloud resources, and especially if your firm is experiencing sticker shock and enough remorse to cause “cloud recoil” — the process of backing workloads out of the cloud to regain control over costs.
Structured is perfectly positioned to lead you and your organization through a cloud planning and adoption exercise to avoid cloud recoil by optimizing cloud usage and controlling spend.
Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider
As a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider, Structured dramatically simplifies Azure monthly billing. Instead of contracting with Microsoft, you can choose to have monthly bills routed through Structured. We provide more personalized service, including better oversight, which leads to more effective cost management for Azure instances.
Because we have evolved with technology since our founding in 1992, we have a clearer picture than most of the interdependencies inherent in IT infrastructure and how that can impact performance in the cloud. Applications, security protocols, the quality of connectivity, and even corporate culture and processes can dramatically impact QoS and whether cloud resources are an asset or a detriment to the bottom line.
Structured Professional Spotlight
Ruth Walters, Cloud Practice Sr. Managing Director
As the Senior Managing Director of Structured’s Cloud Practice, Ruth brings incredible business insight and reasoned leadership to every customer engagement — as well as to Structured’s cloud, managed services, and unified communications practices. She excels in bringing relevant ideas to business leaders about how technology can enhance and advance operations, growth and profitability.