While cloud migration can offer a multitude of benefits, including flexibility, scalability, and high availability; it is not without its challenges. Specifically, organizations have been contending with two fundamental issues: excess cloud costs and cloud performance slowdowns.
What causes high cloud costs?
Excess cloud costs arise for a variety of reasons. As Frost & Sullivan's 2020 Cloud Cost Optimization report notes, organizations often struggle with understanding cloud cost structures and pricing models. This complexity can lead to unexpected costs. The report further adds that only 30% of businesses effectively track cloud spending. Additionally, the over-provisioning of cloud resources is a common source of wasted spending. A lack of governance and clear policies regarding resource usage contributes to this problem.
CloudHealth by VMware notes that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in cloud usage as many businesses shifted to remote work which has continued even though the pandemic has essentially ended. This surge in consumption has driven cloud costs higher, and organization without appropriate monitoring and optimization tools have seen their budgets significantly overrun.
Where do cloud performance issue come from?
Cloud performance issues stem from multiple factors. Misconfigurations are a common cause, leading to slowdowns and ultimately negatively impacting user experience, as noted by a 2020 Microsoft Azure report. Other factors, such as unoptimized applications, network issues, or simply the lack of cloud-specific IT skills within the organization, can all contribute to poor cloud performance.
It's critical to consider cost and performance together
The management of these issues requires a concerted approach. IDG's 2020 Cloud Computing Survey emphasizes the importance of regular audits and optimization, right-sizing, auto-scaling, optimized data transfer costs, and the judicious choice of a purchasing model to manage and optimize costs.
Even with this guidance, addressing cost and performance issues in the cloud are far from trivial. As pointed out by Google Cloud's Performance Atlas, every cloud implementation is unique, potentially rendering standard practices ineffective or counterproductive.
Therefore, best practices involve a thorough understanding of both costs and performance considerations. Flexera's 2020 State of the Cloud Report concludes that many organizations need to enhance their cloud cost management practices, particularly in the areas of visibility, optimization, and future usage and cost forecasting.
In conclusion, understanding the dynamics of cloud costs and performance, coupled with the right practices, can lead to significant savings and improved performance. However, critical to achieving this balance is ongoing management and continuous monitoring. As organizations become increasingly reliant on the cloud, these considerations will remain central to their cloud strategies.
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