WHY IS THE CLOUD COSTING ME MORE THAN I EXPECTED?

Most IT departments have “migrating to the cloud” as one of their goals. 

Moving to the cloud has been touted for years as a nirvana – enabling businesses to save costs and do more. 

And, saving costs is usually the most significant driver for companies to make the move. Consulting company Capita found that for 61% of the IT decision-makers they interviewed in a recent UK study, the main reason for migrating to the cloud was to reduce costs compared to keeping their data on-premises.  

Unfortunately, for many companies, their costs haven’t reduced. Instead, they’ve increased. 

So, why is the cloud costing you more than you expected? 

The cloud is very different from on-premises 

A common misconception is that you can take what you’ve got on-premises, put it in the cloud and everything – from how it works to how you’re charged – is the same. 

It’s not. The cloud operates very differently from on-premises, particularly when it comes to buying cloud services. Therefore, different financial controls are needed to keep your cloud services bill in check. 

However, most of the issues are caused when you’re migrating to the cloud. 

Often, cloud migrations end up with an unnecessary replication of workloads and data. This can lead to significant cost overruns compared to what you were expecting. ​ 

The good news is that these problems can be prevented by utilising a well thought out migration plan. 

Reduce costs by planning your cloud migration 

Thoroughly planning your cloud migration is critical to its success. 

Make sure you allow enough time to complete the migration and then create a roadmap of everything that must be done along the way. 

By planning ahead, you can identify areas where duplication occurs and outline precisely how these are going to be dealt with on your roadmap. 

Preventing duplication of data and workloads can have a significant impact on how much your cloud migration costs. 

Rightsize your environments for cost-efficiency  

Rightsizing is the process of converting something to its ideal or optimum size. 

Computing resources are often under-utilised, so a simple way to reduce your costs is to rightsize your servers. 

This can be done on a time schedule because not all workloads need to run all day, every day. Instead, you can optimise your environment by turning on and off processes and servers, as required. 

Efficiently using your cloud resources will save you a significant amount of money. 

SAS IT’s approach to cloud migration  

There are many benefits to moving your business to the cloud and reducing costs can be one of them. 

Our approach focuses on getting the plan and timeline right before we start any cloud migration. 

Part of this planning involves working out how to optimise and rightsize your environments. 

The end result is a seamless, cost-effective cloud migration that allows your business to continue to innovate and do more. 

Book our Cloud Journey Workshop to plan the cloud migration of your mission critical systems.  

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