Here at DubLow Digital, small businesses in Colorado deserve to get the most out of their technology investments. Cloud computing has revolutionized companies’ operations by providing scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. However, cloud services also have potential downsides, such as cloud waste.
Cloud waste refers to the unnecessary expenditure of resources and money on cloud services that need to be more utilized or optimized. Studies show that around 32% of cloud spending is wasted, which can lead to budget concerns as expenses spiral out of control.
However, this statistic also represents an opportunity to reduce almost a third of cloud spending by optimizing cloud usage. Here at DubLow Digital, we want to help businesses in Colorado do just that. Let’s explore some effective tactics for reducing cloud waste and saving money.
Conduct a Comprehensive Cloud Audit
Before implementing any cost-saving strategies, conducting a cloud audit is crucial. DubLow Digital recommends taking the time to understand your current cloud usage thoroughly. A comprehensive audit helps you identify the following:
- Underutilized resources
- Overprovisioned instances
- Unnecessary services
Use cloud management tools to generate reports that detail usage patterns, costs, and performance metrics. This initial assessment will form the foundation for implementing effective waste reduction strategies.
Implement Right-Sizing Strategies
Right-sizing involves matching your cloud resources to the actual demand of your workloads. Many small businesses in Colorado fall into the trap of overprovisioning, securing more resources, user licenses, or features than needed—which leads to unnecessary costs.
Analyze your workload requirements and resize instances accordingly. Use tools provided by your cloud service provider to identify and adjust capacity. This ensures you only pay for the resources your business truly needs.
Use Reserved Instances and Savings Plans
Cloud providers offer cost-saving options like Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans. These allow businesses to commit to a certain amount of usage in exchange for discounted rates. By leveraging these options, you can significantly reduce cloud costs over time.
Carefully analyze your workload and usage patterns to determine the best-reserved capacity or savings plan. Find a plan that aligns with your company’s long-term goals and helps you save money.
Install Automated Scaling Policies
Implementing automated scaling policies is key for dynamic workloads. Automated scaling ensures that your infrastructure scales up or down based on real-time demand, optimizing performance and preventing overprovisioning during low-activity periods.
Cloud services like AWS Auto Scaling and Azure Autoscale allow you to set predefined scaling policies. These tools help small businesses in Colorado make the most of cloud infrastructure without manual intervention.
Track and Optimize Storage
Storage costs can add up quickly, particularly when data isn’t regularly reviewed or archived. Assess your storage needs and implement lifecycle policies to automatically transition less frequently accessed data to lower-cost storage options.
Review and delete unnecessary data regularly to free up space. DubLow Digital suggests adopting a proactive approach to storage management to reduce the costs associated with data storage significantly.
Schedule Your Cloud Resources
Schedule cloud resources to run only when needed. For instance, turn off development, testing, or staging environments at night and on weekends or scale down production environments during off-peak hours.
Tools are available to help you automate the scheduling of your cloud resources. This ensures that resources are active only when needed, reducing waste.
Delete Unused or Orphaned Cloud Resources
Unused or orphaned cloud resources—such as snapshots, backups, volumes, load balancers, IP addresses, and unused accounts—can accumulate over time, resulting in unnecessary expenses. To avoid this, DubLow Digital recommends regularly auditing your cloud environment and deleting resources you no longer use.
Cloud providers often offer tools to identify and remove unused resources, helping businesses in Colorado streamline cloud usage and reduce waste.
Weed Out Duplicate Services
Different departments within an organization may be using duplicate services. For example, Marketing may use one task management app while Sales uses another. DubLow Digital advises centralizing cloud resources and eliminating duplicate tools.
Everyone using the same cloud tools can save money, enhance collaboration, improve reporting, and streamline data integration.
Embrace Serverless Architecture
Serverless computing allows businesses to run applications without managing the underlying infrastructure, which means you only pay for the computing resources used. This eliminates the need to provision and maintain servers, thereby reducing operational complexity and costs.
Consider migrating suitable workloads to a serverless model to optimize resource utilization and minimize cloud waste.
Schedule a Cloud Optimization Assessment Today!
Following these smart strategies can reduce cloud waste, optimize your spending, and improve operational efficiency. DubLow Digital is here to help small businesses in Colorado save money while enhancing the sustainability of their cloud infrastructure.
Are you struggling with rising cloud costs? Need help identifying and eliminating cloud waste? Our team of cloud experts can assist you.
Contact us today to schedule your cloud optimization assessment and start saving!
