The Top 6 Cloud Optimization Strategies

As business resilience and digital acceleration become increasingly central, companies are turning to cloud computing to store, manage, and process large volumes of critical data.

While the cloud offers adaptability, security, and scalability, it can also be expensive if not optimized correctly. Therefore, it is essential to have a cloud optimization strategy that ensures you are maximising your cloud investment.

1) Right-sizing your infrastructure: One of the most effective cloud optimization strategies is right-sizing your infrastructure. This means choosing the right size and number of virtual machines (VMs) for your workload so that you are not paying for resources you do not need. Many businesses tend to oversize their VMs, leading to unnecessary costs. By monitoring your resource utilization, you can determine the appropriate VM size for each workload, thus reducing costs while meeting performance requirements. Another feature, auto scaling, boosts or reduces the number of VMs based on the changing workload, helping you avoid overprovisioning and reducing costs.

Today, all major cloud providers offer an integrated cloud cost management component that will help you with right-sizing. A good cost management component analyses the workloads and usage telemetry and offers personalised, actionable, context-aware recommendations for resource optimization on the go.

2) Utilizing cloud-native services: Cloud providers offer many native services designed to optimize performance, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. By leveraging these services, you can reduce the need for third-party tools and in-house development, saving both time and money.

For example, cloud providers offer services for data storage, computing, and networking optimized for their platforms. By using these services, you can take advantage of the provider’s expertise, accelerate GTM and save costs.

3) Implementing automation: Automation is a critical component of cloud optimization. By automating routine tasks such as backups, patching, and scaling, you can reduce the risk of errors and free up valuable IT resources. Additionally, automation allows you to run code in response to events, ensuring that you are always operating at peak efficiency.

4) Optimizing data storage: Data storage can be a significant cost for businesses, particularly if data is not managed efficiently. One way to optimize data storage is by implementing tiered storage. This involves moving less-frequently accessed data to lower-cost storage tiers. By doing so, you can reduce the cost of storing data while ensuring it is easily accessible when needed. Another way to optimize data storage is by compressing and deduplicating data. The latter helps reduce redundancy. These techniques reduce the amount of storage needed and can result in significant cost savings.

5) Security: As digitization blurs the boundaries across ecosystems, enhancing security for your cloud architecture is essential, particularly when dealing with sensitive data. A robust encryption approach protects your cloud resources from unauthorized access. Additionally, security protocols such as multi-factor authentication and identity and access management further secure your data and resources. A comprehensive approach to security is a must across all levels of an environment – from the tenant perimeter, network, endpoint devices, storage, compute, applications, and data. Access should follow a Zero-Trust model to minimize the attack surface and address vulnerabilities. Additionally, data encryption should be implemented at all times, including at-rest, in-transit, and in-use, to safeguard business information and comply with ISO standards.

6) Monitoring: For your optimization to succeed, it needs continuous monitoring to provide real-time overviews that support timely and targeted action. Many cloud providers offer monitoring tools that allow you to track resource usage, view performance metrics and identify areas for improvement. Additionally, there are many third-party tools available that can provide even more visibility and insights into your cloud environment. These inputs help you make effective, data-driven optimization decisions, so you always get the most out of your cloud investment.