How to bring runaway cloud costs under control

Another way Ultimate Kilimanjaro budgets for cloud storage is by offering allocated storage allowances per department, so those who might need more storage have it at their disposal. “To me, this allocation of budget is no different than other department budgets, especially since the need to monitor funds spent on technology is always important,” Sawyer says.

Conducting audits and shutting down unused resources, especially at off-hours, prevents overspending, Gogia says. “One e-commerce company I worked with was able to cut their bill by a third by implementing autoscaling and addressing inefficiencies,” he says. “Performance improved at the same time as costs declined.”

Given the “extremely dynamic workloads at Plitch, the company uses, autoscaling extensively to spin up and down resources in response to demand, Schaal says. “Every two weeks we also analyze usage statistics to identify areas that could be optimized,” he says. “This level of information is essential because unrestrained cloud spending has a tendency to grow rapidly.”