In today’s competitive business environment, the benefits of cloud computing, scalability, flexibility, and reduced time to market, are often tempered by the challenge of managing and optimising cloud costs. Without proper oversight and planning, organisations can see their cloud expenses rise unexpectedly, leading to budget overruns and reduced profitability.

According to a 2024 survey by Flexera, 82% of organisations cited managing cloud spend as one of their top cloud challenges, with 45% of enterprises reporting that their cloud spend exceeded budget by an average of 23%. Gartner also predicts that through 2026, 40% of companies will experience at least one major unanticipated cloud cost overrun, highlighting the need for effective cloud cost management.

At Infostatus, we specialise in cloud cost management and optimisation, helping clients reduce their cloud spend significantly without compromising performance, security, or operational efficiency.

The essentials of cloud cost management

Effective cloud cost management begins with understanding your current environment. This means not just tracking spending but analysing how resources are used, identifying waste, and ensuring your cloud strategy aligns with business objectives. Organisations often overspend due to over-provisioned resources, inefficient configurations, and lack of governance. Addressing these issues can lead to substantial savings; we commonly see savings of between 20% and 60% after an initial cost review, and these savings compound over time.

Infostatus offers a detailed Cloud Cost Review service, customised to your business and environment. The savings generally pay for the cost of the report within six months or less. As one example, a client spending nearly $19,000 per month on AWS, which had nearly doubled over a year, saved up to $30,000 annually after our review, around a 20% reduction in their AWS bill, through findings on usage wastage, architecture improvements, and user behaviour.

Governance: the backbone of cost control

Governance is critical to maintaining control over cloud costs. Infostatus advocates for a strong governance framework that includes cost review boards that meet regularly to review spending and decide on optimisation strategies, real-time cost monitoring and alerts, a tagging and cost allocation strategy for granular reporting, and cost centres and backcharging so each department is accountable for its own usage.

Strategies for cloud cost optimisation

Optimising cloud costs means balancing savings with performance and reliability. Infostatus uses a range of strategies tailored to each client:

• Right-sizing resources so clients only pay for the capacity they need
• Instance scheduling for non-production environments. In one recent project this cut 65% off the client’s overall EC2 compute monthly bill
• Savings plans and reserved instances for predictable workloads, reducing costs by up to 70% in some cases
• Removing unused resources such as unattached storage volumes and idle instances. In one recent project this delivered a $10,000 annual saving
• Application modernisation. As one example, Infostatus migrated a legacy AX Dynamics system from a SQL Server-based architecture to a solution using Amazon S3 for storage, Athena for querying, and a web front-end, reducing running costs by 90%
• Optimising architectures by adopting newer cost-effective technologies, scaling strategies, and network optimisations

Realising the benefits

The benefits are clear: reduced expenses, improved operational efficiency, and better alignment of IT resources with business goals. One client running mainly serverless and containerised workloads, with annual spending nearing $157,000, was shown around $30,000 in annual savings by optimising their architecture and service configuration. Another client with primarily EC2 workloads, spending $160,000 per year, realised savings of $40,000 per year through our cost report.

Why partner with Infostatus

AWS pricing is complex, and we want to make it easier. AWS constantly evolves, with new architecture patterns, services, and pricing models that can help save costs. Our Cloud Cost Review service gives you a point-in-time snapshot of your current AWS costs and where the opportunities lie, with prescriptive guidance on how to achieve savings. If you are looking to take control of your cloud costs, Infostatus is here to help. Contact us today to learn how our cloud cost assessments can lead to significant savings and a more efficient cloud environment.