Tip of the Week: Don’t Waste Capital In the Cloud

The cloud has transformed the way people work; and, as a result people rely on it for more than ever. Some businesses have all their computing resources in the cloud, while many others utilize it for software as a service, communication tools, and other major parts of their business’ IT. The more businesses start relying on cloud-hosted computing resources, the more these cloud resources are being wasted. Since they come at a premium price, businesses are beginning to discover that they are wasting money on their cloud.

Cloud Use and Waste
Cloud computing is currently a $130 billion industry and some analysts suggest that it could grow to be worth as much a $411 billion by the 4Q of 2020. With that level of investment being made, there will always be some wasted resources, but amazingly some surveys conducted have found that nearly one-third of cloud computing resources are wasted. If you put that in the context of your business’ cloud investments, you’d have to agree that you probably don’t want to flush 33 percent of any investment down the drain.

How Do Businesses Waste Cloud Resources?
The first thing you’ll have to do to mitigate wasting capital on cloud resources is to get an idea of what your total cloud commitment is (from an operations standpoint). Most businesses that struggle with losing revenue in the cloud don’t have a strategy in place to keep track of those resources. They may be paying for redundant solutions or not using large portions of a solution, driving up the cost per month. Traditionally it is easy for businesses to lose track of accounts and end up paying for resources they don’t need, but there really isn’t any excuse to pay more for a service like cloud computing. It is one of the most available computing resources in business today.

Another way that the average business may waste money is by employing cloud-based tools that they barely use. For instance, if you needed cloud-based software licenses for a project that has been finished, but it’s taken some time to notice, you will find that all the licenses you’ve paid for don’t stop their billing cycle. Moreover, for companies that take advantage of cloud-based infrastructure or development platforms, keeping them functional long beyond their use will lead to lost revenue (as these computing constructs aren’t actively helping generate any new revenue).

At SCW, one of our main benefits is helping organizations keep their business’ computing budgets working for them. Our technicians will do a full audit, and will definitely see any redundant or unused cloud platforms. Sometimes these resources are kept around because they hold proprietary or important information. Our technicians can get that data migrated over to more long-term computing resources so that you can stop paying per month for computing resources that you don’t use.

For more information about how we can help your organization cut your software costs, and manage your cloud-based computing resources, call our professional IT consultants today at (509) 534-1530.