In recent years, we noticed that several enterprises shifted their IT infrastructure to the cloud. However, one of the biggest concerns for enterprises using cloud infrastructure is improving cloud efficiency. Due to unused or underutilized cloud resources, enterprises experience huge cloud costs and negative ROI on their cloud investment. If you’re running or planning to run your IT infrastructure on Microsoft Azure, this blog is for you. In this blog, we will explore the key Azure cloud cost optimization strategies.
What is cloud efficiency?
Utilizing the available cloud resources in the best way is considered cloud efficiency. It comprises keeping cloud waste minimum, proper resource allocations, lowering costs, and improving performance. Cloud computing costs can quickly increase, especially for enterprises dealing with high-volume data. If you are not achieving a positive ROI on your cloud investment, the very core purpose of moving to the cloud is killed. Cloud computing consumes a significant amount of energy, leading to increased carbon emissions. Cloud efficiency is the outcome of combined actions on cost and carbon emissions. How you keep the cloud costs minimum, reduce the carbon emissions and achieve maximum performance is cloud efficiency.
Key Azure cloud cost optimization strategies
Azure cloud cost optimization is the most significant factor for enterprises as it directly impacts their business performance. Cloud cost optimization makes all workloads more efficient for enterprises. Here are the Azure cloud cost optimization strategies enterprises can implement to achieve cloud efficiency.
Right-sizing
One of the most significant steps in controlling increasing cloud costs is rightsizing. Its impact is not limited to saving costs but developing a proper balance between spending and performance.
Cleanup
The next strategy to optimize cloud performance and reduce cost is cleaning up operations. While dealing with several workloads and complex processes, some random resources are created just for transitional purposes, and often, we forget about them. This happens mainly in lift and shift migration cases. Cleaning up these unused resources is a quick win for saving costs. Once you make it a practice, you will uncover various unused and unallocated resources, eating up your cost and performance. Therefore, you need to have a periodical monitoring setup for your infrastructure to ensure there are no unassigned resources that are increasing your technical debt.
Azure reservations and savings plans
Microsoft Azure services have a 1- or 3-year commitment plan wherein it offers significant cloud computing savings granted to the users. It plays a critical role in the overall cost governance aspect for any enterprise as it can save large costs and reduce the carbon footprint. It is recommended to use savings plans and Azure reservations once you are done with cleanup and right-sizing strategies. Monitor their usage according to your business requirements, ensuring it covers all of them. Azure cloud cost optimization strategies must align with your business objectives.
Database and application tuning
Enterprises often migrate their legacy systems to the cloud. The largest set of databases moving to the cloud may come up with some immediate impacts, such as low response to queries, resource-intensive processes, and extensive quantity data exchange that usually adds up costs. Therefore, enterprises must optimize their database and fine-tune their apps so that their applications run faster, saving you money and optimizing your performance using fewer resources.
How can you start your cloud efficiency?
You need to start with quick wins such as cleaning up, downsizing, optimizing logs or backups, and more so that these wins will give you funds for further cost-saving strategies. Cloud computing efficiency is something that enterprises should have on their task list, especially if they are operating in the cloud. These strategies help you save costs, implement best practices, reduce carbon footprints, improve app performance, and help you seize innovative opportunities.
To kickstart your cloud journey, you can connect with Microsoft partners, such as Saxon AI. They can offer you a comprehensive cloud strategy based on your existing system. They can cover everything, starting with assessment and moving to the strategy and implementation phase. If your only concern is saving costs, you can expect them to deliver Azure cloud cost optimization methods.
