Computing costs, like computing itself, should always be predictable. But in reality, cloud infrastructure costs can quickly spiral out of control. There are many reasons why this happens.
Fortunately, you can learn to control them by implementing a smart cloud cost management strategy. In this article, the Sigma Software team will share some insights and tips on managing infrastructure maintenance costs.
Five ways to design the perfect cloud cost management strategy
There are many cloud cost control practices that organizations can implement to manage costs. Here are the top 5 that will help you save your resources. Let’s look at each of them.
Inventory visibility in the cloud
One of the main reasons for the unexpected increase in cloud costs is the poor visibility of cloud resources. Check your infrastructure from scratch. If some resources are not being used but you are still being billed, stop the instances when they are not being used. Or you can organize your idle resources into efficient workflows, such as termination or archiving.
You can also use your service provider’s tools, such as Google Cloud Monitoring, Azure Monitoring or Amazon CloudWatch. Based on the data you collect, you can scale instance sizes, estimate workloads, and receive alerts to track unused resources. This will surely help you control your spending.
A clear cost management policy
There may be many people in your organization who may use the cloud in very different ways. That’s why, when it comes to the cloud, you need to understand who is responsible for what. You want to know who is using your cloud infrastructure, how and according to what rules.
The implementation of special guidelines will define the responsibilities and define the rights of users in managing and changing the infrastructure. These rules can and should be automated.
Define the principles, write down the processes with which you work with the infrastructure, change and optimize it and control costs. All teams must be involved in the processes and understand who is responsible for which part of the development cycle.
Cost-saving infrastructure changes
If you’re not happy with the bills you’re getting from your service provider, try other approaches. Consider serverless architecture.
It is a model where your provider takes responsibility for server operation and management of computing resources. In this case, your organization will only be charged for the resources you use. The company will only be set during the execution of the serverless function. 
The infrastructure scales up and down automatically, so you don’t have to reserve and pay for fixed bandwidth or several servers. Your organization will have as much computing power as it needs. A serverless architecture enables organizations to experience reduced uptime and lower costs. Prevents server operational costs such as image processing, presence detection or access authorization.
Every leading Cloud provider these days offers serverless services: AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Microsoft Azure Functions.
The only downside is that you don’t have full control over server hardware and runtime upgrades.
Another approach you can try is networking.
This is the foundation of a well-designed infrastructure, as users must be constantly connected and transferring data. With the constant movement of data, organizations face additional network costs.
In many cases, organizations often overlook network costs. When there are spikes in traffic, there is a significant increase in cloud costs. This hop is the cost of outgoing data transfer.
Track what goes in and out of the cloud platform using tools like data flow diagrams.
Discounts
Service providers offer many programs with discount options that can help you optimize costs. Google, Microsoft, and AWS have discount programs that reduce the base price of compute instances. In return, they expect you to commit to purchasing a certain level of resources in the future or to accept availability limits. 
Large companies can also look to some programs to realize significant savings. Check out AWS Enterprise Agreements, Microsoft Azure Enterprise Agreements, and Google Cloud for enterprise organizations.
Providers also offer free loan programs to startups to meet their specific requirements. AWS Activate, Azure free accounts and Google Cloud for startups.
Major cloud service providers also offer free trial periods for various individual services, so you can test the capabilities of the platform before purchasing a license. This will give you an idea of how the services work.
Notifications and alerts
Simple here. It allows you to track reports on failed authorizations, cost escalations, budget overruns, etc. This provides timely information on current issues with your cloud costs so that you can resolve them quickly. All leading providers offer cloud optimization tools for alerts and notifications.
Conclusion
The key drivers of cloud cost overruns are the ineffectiveness or lack of a cloud strategy. The key is to have an effective plan to guide your organization in the process of tracking and optimizing cloud costs.
In this article, we have listed the most popular strategies. If you’re just starting your journey, keep in mind that these costs can sometimes be difficult to estimate due to the complexity of cloud infrastructure. Therefore, it is always a good idea to meet with experts who can help you create an effective cloud cost strategy for the benefit of your business.