The Forrester Now Tech Report on Cloud Cost Management and Optimization

Adoption of public cloud infrastructure for enterprise computing has become a standard practice among many organizations that use cloud infrastructure to fuel their SaaS applications. 85% of businesses have adopted or had plans to adopt public cloud infrastructure by the end of 2021, according to a recent survey conducted by Forrester¹ .

With the ever increasing growth in cloud infrastructure adoption in enterprises large and small, cloud cost management is becoming a hot topic since cloud costs are a significant portion of a company’s overhead, especially SaaS companies. When it comes to cloud cost management and optimization, there’s a dizzying array of approaches to choose from, and it can be difficult to separate out the hype to find the product that’s right for your business.

Forrester, a top analyst across many industries, has just published their overview of select vendors in the cloud cost management and optimization (CCMO) space in their Now Tech: Cloud Cost Management And Optimization² report. The report highlights a select set of vendors and provides guidance on what you should consider when looking for a CCMO product for your organization. 

While Yotascale does not have the right to share the report, we are ecstatic that we are included in this edition, in recognition of the momentum we are gaining in the market with our game-changing approach to cloud cost management. There are some key guidelines in the report that are worth highlighting. 

Do you need cloud cost management?

Yes. Not just because a cloud cost management vendor says you do, but because nearly 30% of cloud resources are wasted every year, and many executives are hard pressed to tell you which 30% is wasted. That’s because, according to Forrester:

Despite line-by-line transparency from cloud providers, cost management remains an unwieldy and complex task. Companies want to get cloud costs under control, but they usually find that manual methods aren’t scalable. Therefore, tech leaders turn to cost management tools to help them: visualize cloud costs, optimize resources through scheduling or identifying waste, and improve budget adherence and forecasting²

Yes, clearly Yotascale agrees with Forrester that you need a cloud cost management tool that helps you properly attribute your cloud costs to the right teams, and gives your teams the right information, at the right time, to make the right decisions on cloud spend.

Cloud cost management is continuous

Just as your engineering teams are continuously innovating and creating new applications built on cloud infrastructure, cloud cost management is a continuous process that ensures your teams are always getting the most from your cloud infrastructure. As Forrester notes:

CCMO customers can be tempted to scan environments only once at implementation — but this is a big mistake. Optimization is an ongoing governance task. Environments change depending on new resources deployment, dynamic resource change, or new service availability²

If you’ve never used a cloud cost management product beyond the cloud provider tools, you’ll find that your initial recommendations will uncover a significant amount of cost-saving recommendations for your teams. 

However, the biggest reason to maintain an active CCMO product deployment is for visibility into budget tracking and cost anomaly detection. Did your QA team forget to turn off that test cluster?  Cost anomaly detection will see that and alert teams in real time, rather than discovering a huge bill at the end of the month. 

Cloud cost management is a team sport

If you have one person in finance or DevOps who’s responsible for tracking cloud usage and costs, and providing reports to the management team at the end of the month… well, you’re doing it wrong. Every engineer and engineering manager should know at a glance what their team’s cloud infrastructure usage is, as well as get direct alerts when right-sizing opportunities or cost anomalies are detected. 

Engineering, in concert with DevOps and finance, forms the cloud team, and they have the ability to implement architecture changes that impact cloud costs.  Indeed, your choice of CCMO plays a key role in the way your cloud team functions according to Forrester:

When used correctly, CCMO tools are an integral part of managing bills, forecasting spend, and automating error remediation. More importantly, they play a key role in articulating the value of the cloud team and the individuals that compose it by providing a common visual that shows the current and forecasted spend and provides the business case for the services the team is using.²

Just as cloud cost management isn’t a one-time exercise, it also isn’t the responsibility of one individual or team. Your choice of cost management tool should enable you to create a culture of cloud cost management across your entire infrastructure and engineering team, empowering them to be proactive in cloud cost management. 

Learn more

Recently, Forrester analyst Tracy Woo joined Yotascale CEO Asim Razzaq to talk about how to Optimize Cloud Costs at the Speed of DevOps, and create a culture of cloud cost ownership in your organization.

If you’re ready to start your journey to creating a culture of cloud cost ownership, contact us to find out more!

 

¹ Forrester Analytics Business Technographics® Infrastructure Survey, 2021
² Forrester Now Tech: Cloud Cost Management And Optimization, Q2 2022, Tracy Woo, Alexander Soley at al.