How do you implement cloud governance and policies to control cloud spending?

Cloud computing offers many benefits, such as scalability, flexibility, and efficiency, but it also comes with a challenge: how to manage and optimize cloud spending. Cloud costs can quickly spiral out of control if you don't have a clear strategy and a set of best practices to monitor and optimize your cloud resources. In this article, we will explore some of the key aspects of cloud cost optimization, and how you can implement cloud governance and policies to control your cloud spending.

Key takeaways from this article

Holistic governance approach:

Consider all aspects of cloud use, including financial, operational, and security management. This broad view helps ensure each area supports the others, optimizing spending and performance.
Cloud FinOps practices:

Start by scrutinizing spending patterns and resource use. By comparing costs against actual usage, you can spot wasted resources and adjust to save money without sacrificing service quality.

This summary is powered by AI and these experts

1 Cloud cost optimization

Cloud cost optimization is the process of reducing and aligning your cloud expenses with your business goals and needs. It involves analyzing your cloud usage and performance, identifying and eliminating waste, and finding opportunities to improve efficiency and value. Cloud cost optimization is not a one-time activity, but a continuous cycle of planning, measuring, and improving your cloud operations.

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Jaganadh Gopinadhan (Jagan)

Associate Director - Engineering @ Cognizant | Trusted AI Advisor, Generative AI Strategist, AI Infrastructure, Cloud Engineering, AI Engineering, GenAI/AI/ML and Data Science
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â˜ï¸Cloud cost optimization is part of cloud financial management, sometimes called Cloud FinOps. ðŸ‘• The process starts with identifying the spending, patterns, and resource utilization. The spend is compared against resource utilization telemetry to identify resource wastage and right size the resources. ðŸ”£ Cloud cost optimization exercises help build best practices in sizing cloud resources and running applications and workloads cost-effectively. ðŸ†Studies show that enterprises waste 32% of their cloud spending. A winning strategy in cost optimization should answer questions like: - How will we provision cloud resources monitor and control spending over time? - How do we detect, mitigate, and prevent over-provisioning of resources?

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2 Cloud governance and policies

Cloud governance and policies are the frameworks and rules that define how you manage and use your cloud resources. They help you establish and enforce standards, roles, responsibilities, and processes for your cloud environment. They also help you align your cloud strategy with your business objectives, compliance requirements, and security best practices. Cloud governance and policies are essential for cloud cost optimization, as they help you prevent and detect overspending, misuse, and misconfiguration of your cloud resources.

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Alexandra Foster

Managing Director | IT leaders 100 | Fractional CRO CIO | Digital Transformation | Technology | FinancialServices | Manufacturing | 5G | Cyber | DEI| TedX Speaker @ALF05TER | UN Women UK CSW67CSW68 | Own Opinions |
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Effective cloud governance policy requires a holistic approach where it is essential to recognize the interrelationships between areas across : Financial/ operational management,security/compliance management, configuration/ data/performance/asset management - all each have their own strategic objectives that intertwine with one another in some way or another. For instance: Security is strongly linked to data handling; cost controls can be vastly impacted by operational procedures;managing assets may determine how effective a businessâ€™s lifecycle policies are executed. Therefore all these variables need be taken into consideration when establishing your organisations overall approach for leveraging the power of the Cloud and its governance.

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Justin Craigon

Security Consultant
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One of the key things to consider is how data flows in your organisation and why. Before embarking on a cloud journey organisations should ask themselves What data is critical to your business processes? Where is that data physically stored? What constraints do we have on confidentiality, availability and integrity? By answering these three questions you'll form a basis for a cloud migration that will encapsulate effective cloud cost control by focusing on the key data required and not the totality of your data assets.

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3 Cloud cost management tools

Cloud cost management tools are software applications that help you monitor, analyze, and optimize your cloud spending. They provide you with visibility and insights into your cloud usage and performance, and help you identify and eliminate waste, such as unused or underutilized resources, overprovisioned or overpriced services, and inefficient or redundant processes. Cloud cost management tools can also help you automate and streamline your cloud operations, such as scaling, provisioning, and billing. Some examples of cloud cost management tools are AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, and Google Cloud Billing.

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4 Cloud cost optimization best practices

Cloud cost optimization best practices are the guidelines and recommendations that help you achieve and maintain optimal cloud spending. These practices vary depending on your cloud provider, service, and workload, but some common ones include planning and budgeting your cloud spending based on your business needs and goals, and regularly reviewing and adjusting it. Additionally, you should use cloud-native features and services that offer better performance, scalability, and reliability at lower costs, such as serverless, containers, and managed services. Optimizing your cloud resource utilization and allocation, and avoiding overprovisioning or underprovisioning your cloud resources is also important. Utilize tools and techniques such as right-sizing, auto-scaling, and spot instances to match your demand and supply. Leverage cloud pricing models and discounts that suit your usage patterns and needs, such as reserved instances, savings plans, and pay-as-you-go models. Lastly, implement cloud security and compliance measures to protect your data and assets, and avoid costly breaches, fines, and reputational damage.

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Tolu D.

Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
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Based on real world experience, these few ideas help to optimize cloud cost. -Tag each resource -Enable/Set Cost Alerts -Create Budgets, Set Amount thresholds for Governance. -Review/Implement Advisor Recommendations from time to time. -Be rigid with Role Definitions.

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5 Cloud cost optimization challenges

When attempting to optimize cloud spending, you may encounter various cloud cost optimization challenges. These can include a lack of visibility and transparency into cloud usage and performance, a lack of skills and expertise in cloud cost optimization, and a lack of alignment and collaboration between different teams and stakeholders. Additionally, a lack of governance and policies, or the inconsistency or inefficiency of applying and enforcing them, can lead to cloud sprawl, waste, and risk.

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6 Hereâ€™s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that donâ€™t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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How do you implement cloud governance and policies to control cloud spending?

1

2

3

4

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6

1 Cloud cost optimization

2 Cloud governance and policies

3 Cloud cost management tools

4 Cloud cost optimization best practices

5 Cloud cost optimization challenges

6 Hereâ€™s what else to consider

Cloud Computing

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Directory

How do you implement cloud governance and policies to control cloud spending?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Cloud cost optimization

2 Cloud governance and policies

3 Cloud cost management tools

4 Cloud cost optimization best practices

5 Cloud cost optimization challenges

6 Hereâ€™s what else to consider

Cloud Computing

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