AI software automates significant cloud savings

With organisations accelerating their cloud migrations at the start of the pandemic we saw rapid transformations that delivered fast results, but often at the expense of detailed planning and perfect execution. So, while Gartner expect cloud spending to hit $19B in Australia this year there’s growing discomfort with McKinsey finding that four of every five CIOs aren’t seeing the full value of the cloud.

This is driven by a widening skills gap, the sheer magnitude of those digital transformations and ongoing changes in the services offered by large cloud hyperscalers.

And in turn, this leads organisations to look at how they can optimise their investment in the cloud. Rebecca Bradburne, the divisional director for ANZ at Spot by NetApp, explains.

“In the aftermath of a customers’ accelerated cloud migration, this cloud cost acceleration has resulted in organisations having to suspend or completely withdraw from digital transformation projects. Organisations are now starting to look into how they spend, seeking ways to gain visibility and recommendations of how to rectify and remediate their cloud spend challenges. Their goal is to get those innovation projects back on track whilst gaining control of their monthly cloud spending.”

Bradburne says this is driving organisations to look at FinOps. She says this is an organisational framework or a cultural shift that brings together finance, technology, and business to tackle ever-growing cloud costs. 

“Spot by NetApp is an operations platform that delivers cloud optimisation through a suite of automation tools, powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. .  For example, Spot by NetApp automates the ability to run mission-critical workloads on Spot instances, idle resources available from the hyperscalers at a much lower cost, continually providing resources at the lowest possible price while ensuring service continuity and quality is maintained.”

Many cloud migrations took a ‘lift and shift’ approach, as that was seen as the fastest and easiest way to move services to cloud during the early days of the pandemic. But as Steve Parsonage, the CEO and co-founder of Canary IT explains, while this might have been a means to an end, the reality is that cloud services are not ‘set and forget’.

“Cloud technology advances very quickly and the hyperscalers regularly release new workloads and new system configurations. Many of those come in at better cost points. If you lift and shift and leave the workloads running in a set-and-forget manner you won't be optimising those workloads," he said.

"The introduction of FinOps and other optimisation technologies and techniques leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to ensure that services delivered through public cloud providers use the lowest cost tiers without compromising business outcomes.”  

Bradburne and Parsonage have both seen clients achieve substantial savings in the order of 60 percent on cloud expenditure through FinOps. Those savings have enabled their customers to not only save money but use those funds to expedite other projects that have delivered more business value.

Getting the full benefits of public cloud services relies on ensuring every element of the technology stack is optimised. Platforms such as Spot by NetApp and service providers like Canary IT ensure that organisations are using the lowest cost options so that they can use their resources more efficiently to power their digital transformation journeys.

To drive more business value in your organisation, request a free cloud cost assessment today.