Cloud services have proven to be extraordinarily useful for businesses of all types. With an immense amount of options to choose from, businesses can get anything from AI to Windows in the cloud. With so many services available, sometimes businesses will pay for computing resources that they don’t use, cutting into their available operational capital. Today, we take a look at how businesses throw capital away by not keeping a close eye on their cloud-based resources.  

One of the major value propositions cloud service providers use is that an organization can control the amount of computing they need. The scalable nature of the cloud seems as though it would be one of its great benefits; and, it can be, if it is managed properly. Unfortunately, when organizations pivot, there are often resources that are left behind. This can create a situation where those scalable and flexible solutions are actually costing you more money than they’re worth to you.

That’s not to say that cloud services aren’t very attractive: they absolutely are. Unfortunately, if your strategy is to adhere to the scalable computing resources found in the cloud, you have to be sure that you are eliminating recurring expenses if you aren’t planning on using them; and, many organizations aren’t. They will routinely pay for recurring web services after their use is up, or after they make cuts to their workforce. This is wasted money, and if your organization doesn’t have a strategy to keep track, it’s problematic. 

Additionally, companies that use hosted environments for development or virtual machines for application distribution may initially find cost savings by moving to the cloud, but over time, see those savings dilapidated as larger-than-needed VMs are left running and other computing platforms chew up resources that are billed per CPU hour or per gigabyte. 

So how do you go about creating a strategy that will give your staff the resources they need, while also not having to waste money on unused cloud resources? Here are a couple tips:

• Track all online service licenses and correlate them with the number of employees that need that software to complete their jobs.
• Have a system in place where employees can find solutions to help them, while providing you the ability to block this Shadow IT software, if it poses any threat.
• Clean up old volumes, snapshots, and machine images. 
• When you turn on resources in non-production environments, make sure to set it to the minimum size requirements. 
• Use the Reserved Instances option for any production resources and manage them closely. You could save up to 75 percent off your cloud investments. 

These five tips will go a long way toward helping you control your cloud computing costs, and allow you to keep these cloud services working for your company, instead of against it. Cloud computing can be a complete game-changer for a business, but if you don’t keep on top of it, you could be wasting a lot of very usable financial resources. Call the IT pros at CTN Solutions today at (610) 828- 5500 to talk to one of our professional consultants about how to get the most bang for your buck.