Over the years, organizations have embraced cloud computing for its numerous benefits. However, the rise in cloud adoption has also led to an increase in cloud waste. In 2021, cloud waste amounted to $26.6 billion, up from $17 billion in 2020. This significant increase has prompted organizations to take immediate action to mitigate cloud waste.

While 90% of organizations benefit from cloud computing's cost-saving advantages, unmanaged cloud usage can erode these benefits, reducing efficiency and performance. Several factors contribute to cloud waste, such as over-provisioning, idle assets, and orphaned objects. Avoiding cloud waste is crucial to maximize the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of cloud computing.

What Causes Cloud Waste?

Cloud waste can occur unexpectedly through various means, including:

Overprovisioning Resources:
Organizations often purchase more storage space than necessary, anticipating future needs. This over-provisioning leads to excessive resource allocation, increased latency, higher cloud spending, and delayed data access. Cloud storage is scalable, so extra space is often unnecessary.

Idle Resources:
Idle resources, costing over $8.8 billion annually, are provisioned but unused assets. These often accumulate during testing, staging, and development phases. Unused resources include unscheduled VMs, non-production resources, idle load balancers, dormant databases, and containers not removed promptly.

Mishandling On-Demand Services:
On-demand resources should be reserved for emergencies. Organizations often deploy them for general use, overlooking more cost-effective alternatives like spot or reserved resources. Properly matching needs with services requires prioritization.

Orphaned Resources:
Forgotten or de-provisioned resources should be regularly cleaned up to prevent waste.

Over-Centralization:
Migrating all data to a single private or public cloud without a proper strategy can be inefficient. Leveraging multi-cloud or hybrid cloud solutions can be more effective, considering factors like region, tier, and infrastructure.

Ways to Avoid Cloud Waste

Here are some strategies and tools to prevent overspending on cloud resources:

1. Right-Sizing Virtual Machines: Use tools like AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Compute Optimizer to resize VMs based on actual needs.
2. Auto-Scaling: Implement auto-scaling tools like AWS Auto Scaling to adjust cloud capacity automatically, improving availability and security while reducing costs.
3. Cost Allocation Tagging: Map costs directly to applications or features to right-size resources effectively.
4. Resource Visibility: Utilize analysis features provided by vendors to monitor cloud environments and identify resources that should be parked or shut down. Amazon CloudWatch, for instance, helps optimize resource utilization.
5. Auto Parking: Use auto-parking features to suspend resources when they are not in use, avoiding idle resources and saving costs.

As cloud usage continues to rise, effective cloud capacity management and cost optimization are essential to reduce cloud waste. Microsoft Azure offers tools like Azure Load Balancer, Azure Archive Storage, Azure Container Registry, Azure Kubernetes Service, and Azure Advisor to optimize workloads and enhance transparency. Similar features are available on other cloud platforms.

A critical step in migrating to the cloud is cloud capacity planning, which helps determine what and where to allocate resources. As Peter Drucker said, "If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it." A strategic roadmap with proper capacity planning can help save on budget and avoid cloud waste.

How Can We Help You?

At DumpsBoss, we provide organizations with strategic capacity planning to optimize cloud usage and prevent cloud waste effectively.