E-Handbook: Effective ways to contain your cloud spending Article 1 of 4

The nuances of cloud economics can cost you

In their exuberance to seize the opportunity of the cloud, organizations of all types and sizes have turned to service providers' platforms as places where they can run workloads, develop applications, back up data and handle other important IT tasks.

A key attribute in this shift to cloud computing is the idea that the cloud's pay-as-you-go model allows an organization to scale back its in-house IT spending while at the same time being able to tap all of those useful services. The trick is to be sure cloud spending is closely tied to the organization's actual needs.

Too often, resources will be sized inappropriately. Data transfers will be handled in ways that incur unnecessary charges. Forgotten virtual servers will run for no reason. All of these missteps will result in a cloud bill that's unnecessarily high.

This handbook offers specific guidance on how to optimize cloud spending. IT analyst Chris Tozzi provides a detailed breakdown of how to avoid common cloud spending mistakes. The costs of inefficient storage tiers or overprovisioned servers, while not eye-popping in isolation, will add up over time.

Further guidance in this handbook looks at ways to keep cloud scaling costs to a minimum and whether cloud cost calculators are helpful.

Equipped with the right information, you should be able to focus your organization's cloud spending so that you see the advantages of the cloud model without running up bills that make you question why you ever started down this road.

Phil Sweeney
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