Hybrid and Multicloud Management

Strategy 5: Track and Optimize Private and Public Cloud Spending

Failure to meet cost targets is a consistent cloud complaint. A multicloud IT environment is complex with a wide variety of services, as illustrated in Figure 5-1. Cost overruns can result from excessive upfront costs, unexpected scaling costs, and wasted or oversized resources and services. Cloud users are often better at provisioning resources than they are at releasing them. This can be due to lack of visibility, mistakes, or neglect. To control usage, reduce cloud spend, and avoid wasting resources, you need to be able to monitor and meter actual costs, identify and eliminate unused resources, and identify and rightsize underused resources across your public and private clouds. You also need to be able to optimize your choices based on actual consumption.

This strategy explores some of the challenges around hybrid cloud costs—including the significant differences between private and public cloud—and it suggests an approach for implementing effective cost governance.

Figure 5-1. Today’s multicloud environments include a diverse set of services supporting both traditional and modern workloads. Failure to manage this complexity leads to increased costs.

Hybrid Cloud Cost Governance Challenges

To understand the cost governance challenges created by hybrid cloud, it’s important to look first at unique public and ...