Reclaiming IT Spend with Strategic Cloud Resource Optimization (CRO): Bitful’s Approach
According to Forrester’s Budget Planning Survey for 2025, over 90% of IT decision-makers plan to increase their budgets in 2025. However, Forrester warns that without a robust strategy, investing more in data management, infrastructure, analytics, AI, and governance could end up being a waste of money.
The economic situation adds to this concern. The International Monetary Fund’s April 2024 World Economic Outlook projects inflation to average 4.5% in 2025. For many organizations, this means increased budgets will merely offset inflationary costs, forcing IT leaders to find ways to optimize spend, even as they invest more.
The Strategic Imperative for Cloud Resource Optimization
With the current industry trends, there’s a lot of pressure to save money on existing investments, especially in cloud infrastructure, where costs can quickly spiral out of control without proper oversight. So, how can you optimize cloud costs effectively and sustainably?
- Should you implement immediate cloud cost reductions?
- Should you roll out strategic cloud infrastructure optimizations?
- Should you transition to cost-efficient cloud solutions?
While these options seem straightforward, rushing into them without a strategic, long-term plan can lead to costly inefficiencies and operational disruptions, which could ultimately hurt your competitiveness.
Human-Centric Cloud Resource Optimization
At Bitful, we believe in putting people first. Instead of focusing solely on IT, we prioritize business goals and the experiences of end-users. Cloud budget decisions aren’t just about technology—they’re crucial business choices that impact how efficiently your organization runs, how productive your employees are, and how resilient your company can be.
Our approach to cloud resource optimization is all about aligning IT strategy with your business goals, ensuring every dollar spent boosts both performance and user experience. For instance, with our strategic, human-centric approach, we led a team of over 30 Azure architects and engineers to help a major telecommunications company cut down on cloud costs. The outcome? A remarkable $50 million in cost avoidance.
Every project we work on is unique, but we’ve found some key strategies and tools that can help with cloud optimization. By implementing these, you can reduce costs and boost efficiency at the same time.
1. Identify New Areas for Optimization and Cost Savings
Approach
Analyze how resources are being used and what the business needs to spot any inefficiencies that might go unnoticed. This way, you can tailor optimization strategies to boost the efficiency of your cloud data platform and make sure they fit perfectly with your company’s unique business goals.
Tools to Consider
- CloudHealth by VMware
Provides detailed insights into cloud costs, usage patterns, and performance metrics across multiple cloud environments.
Benefit: Identifies cost inefficiencies and recommends optimization strategies to maximize ROI.
- Flexera One
A multi-cloud management platform offering cost optimization and governance.
Benefit: Uncovers unused and underutilized resources, providing actionable insights for cost reduction.
While these tools provide useful data, a holistic approach is necessary to fully leverage their insights. By combining tool-based data with expert analysis tailored to your unique business needs, you can uncover deeper, sustainable cost savings and efficiency improvements that align with your strategic goals.
2. Refine Processes to Drive Cloud Data Platform Efficiency
Approach
Optimizing cloud costs means taking a fresh look at your current processes and finding ways to make them more efficient. By analyzing key workflows, you can spot areas that could be streamlined or restructured.
Taking a business and human-centric approach ensures that these improvements are customized to fit your unique operational needs rather than just applying generic technical solutions that might not suit your business.
Tools to Consider
- Ansible by Red Hat
An automation tool for configuration management, application deployment, and orchestration.
Benefit: Simplifies complex processes, reduces manual errors, and accelerates deployment times.
- HashiCorp Terraform
An infrastructure as code (IaC) tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently.
Benefit: Automates provisioning across multiple cloud providers, ensuring consistent and efficient environments.
3. Enhance Visibility and Reporting for Better Cloud Cost Management
Approach
One of the biggest challenges in cloud cost management is not having a clear picture of where the money is going. By using advanced visibility and reporting tools, you can get a clear view of your cloud expenses.
This transparency helps you make informed, data-driven decisions that can save a lot of money. With detailed reports, everyone stays on the same page about cloud costs and efficiency goals, which promotes accountability and smart cloud investments.
Tools to Consider
- Datadog
A monitoring and analytics platform for cloud-scale applications.
Benefit: Offers real-time visibility into cloud infrastructure and applications, helping detect and resolve issues quickly.
- CloudCheckr
A cloud management platform providing cost management, security, and compliance features.
Benefit: Delivers detailed reports on cloud usage and spending, facilitating better cost management and optimization.
- Apptio
A technology business management (TBM) tool that specializes in providing transparency into IT spending and aligning cloud costs with business priorities.
Benefit: Helps businesses understand the financial impact of cloud usage, linking costs to business outcomes and enabling more strategic, value-driven cloud investment decisions.
4. Define and Enhance Provisioning Methodologies
Approach
One of the best ways to manage cloud costs is by optimizing how you provision resources. Tailor your provisioning methods to match your organization’s specific usage patterns, ensuring resources are allocated efficiently and nothing goes to waste.
This approach not only cuts costs but also supports agile scalability, allowing your cloud resources to grow or shrink based on real-time demand.
Tools to Consider
- Kubernetes
An open-source platform for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
Benefit: Optimizes resource utilization by efficiently scheduling containers, reducing overhead.
- AWS Auto Scaling
Automatically adjusts AWS compute resources to maintain application performance.
Benefit: Ensures the right amount of resources at the right time, minimizing costs while maintaining performance.
- Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS)
A tool for managing and scaling groups of virtual machines in Azure.
Benefit: Provides automatic scaling of virtual machines to match demand, which optimizes resource usage and supports consistent performance in Azure-based environments.
By implementing these strategies and using the right tools, you can make informed decisions that boost efficiency and save money, all while improving performance and resilience. Focusing on a business-centered and human-centric approach ensures your cloud investments provide the most value and support your long-term goals.
Take the Next Steps
- Assess Compatibility: Look at which strategies and tools fit best with your current cloud setup and business needs.
- Run Pilot Programs: Think about running a pilot program to test these approaches and tools before rolling them out fully.
- Implement Training and Adoption: Make sure your team is trained not just on the tools but also on the strategic, human-centric methods to get the most out of them.
- Seek Expert Guidance: Engage with Bitful to conduct a detailed review of your current cloud strategy, identify immediate savings opportunities, and develop a roadmap for long-term cost optimization and efficiency.
Get Started
Reducing cloud costs isn’t just about slashing expenses. It requires a thoughtful, strategic approach that aligns with your business objectives and enhances user experience.
If you’re ready to optimize your cloud resources with a business and human-centric approach, contact us for a free consultation.
We’re excited to assist you with:
- Accelerating the optimization of your cloud resources
- Identifying new areas for optimization and cost savings
- Enhancing visibility and reporting
- Streamlining key processes for improved efficiency
- Creating a sustainable model to capitalize on savings optimizations
- Defining and enhancing your provisioning methods
