Keys to Picking a Cloud Spend Tool

The news is in.  

The available tools to control cloud costs are exploding.

Why?

1. The pandemic has drastically accelerated public cloud adoption

2. Inflation is causing companies to get budget-conscious about their cloud spend

3. Cloud spend is now a bigger piece of IT budgets.

Which Cloud Spend Tool Should You Choose?

Forrester says the ‘table stakes’ for new cloud cost containment companies are analyzing all 3 top providers: Amazon EC2, Azure VM, and Google Compute Engine (GCE) with recommendations that factor in memory, CPU, disk, and network data. Differentiation lies in the breadth of instances a platform can optimize but the most extensive may be overkill for the SMB to mid-market who need simple tools for achieving cost control.  The best solution includes rightsizing recommendations that are easy to understand and implement.  A simple dashboard that zeroes in on waste and under-utilization with clear recommendations is the right choice for all but the largest cloud users.

Users should check out the market but don’t overbuy to get features that won’t be used.  Like most software, customers use a small fraction of the app’s capabilities to accomplish their jobs.  The same is true for cloud spend apps.