New Aptum study explores how best to deal with unexpected cloud costs

Aptum, a hybrid multicloud managed service provider, released Part 3 of its annual Cloud Impact Study 2022 this week. The main takeaway is that cloud computing has resulted in higher than expected costs for his 73% of IT decision makers surveyed.

Marvin Sharp, the company’s vice president of product and strategy, said: Unexpected costs are usually due to unfamiliarity with the cloud. ”

Companies don’t always have a complete understanding of how the consumption model works and which model is best for their organization. This price increase can be large and is not always explained to businesses, causing unnecessary concern.”

Based on responses from 400 senior IT professionals based in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Part 1 of the study was released in February and explores deploying workloads on various cloud infrastructures and their placement implications. The decision-making process behind it was explored.

Part 2 was released in June and explored “The Complexities Inherent in Hybrid Cloud Environments and Their Implications for Security, Data Governance, Compliance, and Disaster Recovery.” As a result, it became clear that effectively managing security is no longer just a matter of protecting data within each environment; it must also protect data as it moves between locations.

“Companies use different environments for different purposes,” Sharp said. “For example, a platform for application development and a platform as a production site. This is where you realize the benefits of a hybrid cloud environment, but moving workloads between the two puts your data at risk. Therefore, in a hybrid work environment, organizations must consider protecting point A and point B, and moving data between them.”

Regarding the unforeseen cost issue explored in the latest installment, the report’s authors say the 73% figure is “a notable increase of 28% from just over half (57%) of companies in 2021.” increase.

And while 71% of IT executives believe cloud transformation will have a “positive impact on operational efficiency,” surveyed IT decision-makers 65% of respondents say they are wasting a lot of IT. Spending on cloud inefficiencies. ”

According to Aptum, the main causes of unexpected costs are:

• unfamiliar with the cloud – Limited in-house knowledge, expertise, and resources are obstacles to effectively managing the cloud.
• runaway clouds cost – If companies do not configure their cloud to scale up and down effectively, they often consume more resources than expected.
• “Hotel California cloud” effect – The cloud is temptingly easy to get into, but hard to get out of. To avoid egress charges, planning and expertise are essential when choosing the best cloud infrastructure for your workloads.
• hybrid complexity – Mixing hybrid, multi-cloud, and legacy infrastructure platforms incurs their own additional management costs.
• Cloud modernization – Organizations are increasingly looking to modernize their cloud applications. However, lack of expertise and the presence of legacy systems often add complexity and cost to doing this.
• wrong consumption model – Companies new to the cloud may find themselves adopting the wrong consumption model.

The report also noted, “The impact of inflation on costs represented some of the most significant concerns of respondents. In fact, cost savings was the fourth-leading driver for cloud transformation at 37%. At the same time, about the same number of organizations (35%) expect managing cloud costs to be their biggest challenge.”

Furthermore, “There is clear evidence that the benefits of the cloud can have a positive financial impact on a business, with 90% of organizations surveyed saying cloud computing has delivered the efficiencies they expected.” increase.

“But one of the big challenges for companies is their technical and strategic approach to cloud transformation and whether they have the resources to deliver an effective approach.”