And the #1 Cloud Challenge for 2019 Is…

The award, if you want to call it that, goes to Cost Optimization for the third year in a row, according to RightScale’s 2019 State of the Cloud Report. Here are a few highlights from the report:

• 64 percent of all enterprises said that optimizing existing cloud use for cost savings was their top initiative in 2018 (up from 58 percent in 2018)
• 70 percent of intermediate cloud users and 76 percent of advanced cloud users cited optimizing cloud use for cost savings as their top priority
• 84 percent of enterprises said optimizing cloud costs was a growing challenge. (up from 80 percent in 2018)

Are Your IT Priorities More Than Just Words?

Judging from these data points, more than a simple majority of enterprises have prioritized cost optimization. However, it’s also interesting to note that many enterprises haven’t backed up their words with action.

• A minority of companies had implemented automated policies such as shutting down unused workloads or rightsizing instances
• Only 47 percent of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users and 23 percent of Microsoft Azure users leveraged reserved instances

What are Reserved Instances?

Reserved instances are dedicated resources on either Azure or AWS. Unlike “pay as you go” resources, you pay upfront for these resources as well commit to hourly usage payments for as long as three years. If you know you’re going to need the capacity, reserved instances can make sense. At discounts as high as 75 percent off the standard hourly rates, investing in reserved instances can help you lower your AWS or Azure bills. Contact us and we’ll help you determine if Reserved Instances are right for you.

Of course, cost-optimization is only one piece of the cloud management puzzle. To create a complete picture, IT managers also need to consider performance and security. (In fact, we were a bit surprised to learn that cost-optimization trumped security, again, in the 2019 survey.) Without all three of these pieces in place, enterprises will fail to realize the benefits of cloud computing and may expose their organizations to some serious risks.

Unless you have resources on staff, maybe it’s time to call in some reinforcements.

You Don’t Need to Give Up Control

It doesn’t matter whether IT is your forte and you just need some extra help or you have no idea what you’re doing when it comes to the public cloud: No CIO or CTO wants to give up visibility into their cloud environments. Nor should they!

Customers that come over to Connectria after a bad experience with another provider are often using a third-party cloud management tool. For example, Tensoft came to Connectria after try two different managed hosting partners. The first proved too difficult to work with, and the second didn’t have broad enough expertise to meet their needs.

Tensoft was already using a third-party solution so they could see what was happening in their cloud environments. (They certainly couldn’t count on the first provider to let them know.) However, they’re also looking at using Connectria’s TRiA Multi-Cloud Management Platform to help them gain visibility into the cost-optimization side of things.