CLOUD
How to take back control of your spiralling cloud spend Without cloud, the last 18 months would have looked very different. All businesses are now incredibly dependent on this technology, so IDC’s estimated increase for cloud infrastructure spending in 2021 shouldn’t come as a surprise, at a rise of 12.9 per cent to $74.6 billion compared to 2020. BY ADRIAN BRADLEY, PARTNER AND HEAD OF CLOUD TRANSFORMATION AT KPMG UK THE CLOUD HOSTS and supports so many technologies that organisations depend on every day, some of which are designed to improve efficiency and streamline processes to generate huge savings. However, many organisations are finding that these savings are being offset by spiralling cloud costs and cloud waste. In fact, almost a third of organisations’ cloud investment is inefficient, according to several estimates. Companies are on a slippery slope – they are utterly dependent on cloud and are only going to plough more investment into it. The result: out of control spending, and an evergrowing cloud value gap. It has become a strategic priority for enterprises to realise the full benefits of the cloud, but with so much already being spent and wasted on it, when it comes to future investment, the Board may be reluctant to direct any additional investment its way.
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So how has this situation emerged? One issue is that there are a lot of junior people who have the power to make many small decisions that drive cloud costs. In such case, a user self-service portal without guardrails ends up doing a disservice at an organisational level. Cloud spend tools are always helpful to manage and orchestrate costs. However, without the right governance and processes in place spending can still get out of control. The cumulative effect being an overall surge in cloud expenditure, with no oversight whatsoever, i.e., the large variety of users and budget holders exacerbates the cloud sprawl. Furthermore, these resource holders often won’t have a great deal of visibility into what their applications will cost in the cloud and they are not being held accountable. Cloud price fluctuations and new services being offered all the time, which may or may not benefit the business, compound the
