Aptum, a worldwide supplier of advisory and consulting services as well as managed hosting services (formerly known as Cogeco Peer1), issued the second installment of its yearly Cloud Impact Study 2023, titled ‘Maximizing Value: Controlling Costs and Optimizing Cloud Spend.’ The report found that 71% of IT professionals polled said that at least 30% of their entire IT budget goes toward cloud-related expenses.
Four hundred senior IT professionals from companies with more than 250 people in the US, UK, and Canada participated in Aptum’s survey. It looks at the current trends in cloud cost management as well as how they have changed over time.
The financial effects of an organization’s commercial activities are becoming more and more apparent in the current difficult economic environment. Even while cloud computing has helped businesses in recent years with cost savings, scalability, agility, and flexibility, there are always unanticipated expenses. Due to inefficiencies with cloud platforms and services, over half (52%) of IT professionals acknowledged that their firms had squandered considerable IT expenditures, according to Aptum’s market study.
Specifically, in the previous year, 73% of IT respondents said that their cloud investment has led to higher-than-expected IT expenditures. This is a 28% rise over 2021 statistics. A complete ROI (return-on-investment) audit of cloud expenditures is also expected to be done, according to the majority of IT professionals (92%) – a percentage that increased from 89% in 2022. However, why are these expenses rising?
The poll found a number of contributing issues, such as inadequate preparation, a deficiency of internal knowledge, the quickening pace of cloud adoption, and a lack of experience with sophisticated cloud solutions. When businesses use a hybrid, multi-cloud approach that combines public and on-premises cloud services for various workloads and data services, these difficulties are significantly exacerbated.
At the moment, 62% of respondents agree that they haven’t been able to expedite cloud installations due to a lack of internal experience. It is essential to acquire skills and understanding in cloud strategy in order to counteract these rising expenses.
‘It’s Like Flying in a Cloud’
Ian Rae, CEO & President of Aptum, said, “Many organizations think they are succeeding in the cloud, but in reality, it’s like flying in a cloud, they have to rely on instrumentation, which is usually inadequate to begin with, and piloting experience which takes time to develop. The absence of control and observability makes the cloud less expensive, but it is the management that is hampered and ultimately results in overspending. This deficiency seriously impairs the potential of the cloud to improve operational efficiency while reducing expenses.”
The findings in Aptum’s study show that when enterprises increase their use of cloud services, they find it more difficult to get the most out of their investments. For many IT executives, the difficulty of not having a complete multi-cloud strategy keeps them from fully using the cloud’s disruptive potential.
However, sustained cost reductions would need a well-defined cloud investment plan that prioritizes cost visibility and control, particularly for organizations increasing their cloud investments and transitioning to increasingly intricate, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud environments. Making sure businesses are using the cloud effectively would require adherence to many FinOps principles:
- Cost Accountability and Visibility – By providing teams with more insight into their cloud expenses, FinOps enables them to make more frugal spending decisions.
- Optimized Resource Usage – FinOps techniques assist in locating idle or underused resources, which might result in downsizing or termination.
- Improved Forecasting and Decision-Making – With precise insights, usage analysis-based choices may be made with knowledge, lowering the possibility of unforeseen overruns.
- Cultural Shift – The culture of FinOps promotes cost as an organizational perspective and a regular topic of conversation throughout operations.
- Continuous Improvement – FinOps’ iterative structure guarantees that cloud financial management procedures are improved continuously, which results in continued savings.
