How to significantly reduce cloud costs?

The initial point for calculating cloud costs may be to increase the operational efficiency of the enterprise, but it should not be a decisive factor. In addition, teams should determine the cloud coverage of their organization’s products, services and technologies. The following are a few recommendations that can help you optimize your initial cloud service costs.

Inventory of products. Take an inventory of existing products in order to identify those that are either outdated or are inherited and do not represent strategic value for interacting with customers. Find out if you can get rid of them, and then create a simple but seamless plan for disabling legacy versions or products that require updating.

The demand for features and capabilities. In addition to the products themselves, which can be decommissioned, the company may have functions that have not reached market potential, but which are actively supported. Analyze if there is an urgent need for them and whether their abandonment will affect operational efficiency.

Standardization of technological stacks. Take a closer look at how teams use technology in different departments, evaluate the scope of tasks and results to understand whether it is possible to standardize products and, possibly, reduce the technological stack.

Operational effectiveness should be one aspect of the product development process. By creating a wide network for searching ideas, determining the scope of the project and setting priorities, the company involves as many participants as possible, allowing them to contribute to the financial success of the company. Guided by best practices, optimization and business function managers should ask the following questions:

1. Do team members offer ideas for cost optimization? Does the project include the costs of creating a product and the cost of supporting it when it goes into commercial operation?
2. Is cost optimization one of your priorities?
3. Does your market entry roadmap include support costs?

By following this approach, significant savings can be achieved: within one year, costs for cloud technologies can be reduced by 55%, as well as achieve sustainable growth as part of the corporate culture.