According to a new report Anodot released today, nearly half of businesses (49 percent) find it difficult to get cloud costs under control, and 54 percent believe their primary source of cloud waste is a lack of visibility into cloud usage. Anodot is a business monitoring company.
The findings highlight an ongoing visibility crisis in which organizations struggle to gain appropriate insights into the breakdown of cloud costs and efficiency of cloud use and therefore cannot reduce wasted spending effectively – even as cloud migration continues to rise and cutting costs is a priority. The report is based on a survey of 131 U.S.-based IT directors and executives.
Anodot’s “2021 State of Cloud Cost Report” reveals the pandemic greatly accelerated many companies’ shift to the cloud, and the latest survey confirms the transition continues as businesses appreciate the agility and scalability the cloud provides: 91 percent of respondents reported they have IT infrastructure in the cloud; 60 percent said that migrating more workloads to the cloud is their top cloud initiative in the coming year.
As enterprises continue to face high monthly cloud bills – with cloud costs ranking second only to payroll in terms of business expenses for many – visualizing costs, optimizing spending and reducing wasted dollars are top priorities, especially in the wake of a slowing economy.
A significant portion of these inflated cloud bills could have been avoided: 44 percent of respondents said that at least one-third of their cloud spend is wasted each year. Visibility is the main culprit: most executives surveyed (53 percent) said gaining visibility into cloud usage and costs is their top challenge for controlling spend and reducing waste; one-fifth (19 percent) said they lack the ability to manage their cloud budget due to insufficient visibility into cloud usage.
Cloud costs also are becoming increasingly complex to track and understand, also leading to misspending: 46 percent of executives report overprovisioning is a primary source of cloud waste, while 45 percent blame cloud assets’ fragmentation across teams and vendors.
“Shifting to the cloud requires a delicate balance between the speed of workload migration and cost control,” said David Drai, Anodot CEO and co-founder. “Today, cloud cost management – which is all the more crucial as businesses strive to mitigate wasted resources and shore up revenues – should be based on four key elements: visibility, insights, recommendations, and automated actions. Enterprises that are leveraging AI and ML to control and optimize their cloud environments are seeing immediate results and reduced waste, unlocking the true value the cloud has always promised.”
Additional findings:
- Surprise, Surprise – More than a third of participants (37 percent) have been surprised by their cloud costs or had an incident related to cloud costs.
- Growing Complexity – When asked to choose the top challenges in controlling cloud costs, 53 percent said the key challenge is gaining true visibility into cloud usage and costs; 50 percent said complex cloud pricing; 49 percent said complex, multi-cloud environments.
- Unnoticed Spikes – 28 percent of respondents said it takes weeks or months to notice a spike in cloud costs – no improvement in the average time to detect incidents since 2021.
