Highlights:

  • The report is based on a poll of 131 IT directors and executives in the United States.
  • 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.

A new report published by business monitoring company Anodot has revealed that nearly half of businesses (49%) find it hard to keep cloud costs under control, and for 54% of them, not being able to see how the cloud is being used is the main reason for cloud waste. The results show a constant visibility crisis where organizations find it hard to get the correct information about how cloud costs are broken down and how efficiently they are being used. Because of this, they cannot cut down on wasted spending, even though cloud migration is on the rise and saving money is a priority. The report is based on a poll of 131 IT directors and executives in the United States.

Anodot’s 2021 State of Cloud Cost Report showed that the pandemic considerably hastened many companies’ move to the cloud. The recent survey shows that the move is still going on as businesses value the flexibility and scalability of the cloud: 91% of respondents said that their IT infrastructure is already in the cloud, and 60% said that moving more workloads to the cloud is their next year’s top cloud project. As businesses continue to have high monthly cloud bills—for many, cloud costs are second only to payroll in terms of business expenses—visualizing costs, optimizing spending, and reducing wasted dollars are top priorities, especially as the economy slows.

A larger chunk of these overpriced cloud bills could have been avoided: 44% of the people who participated in the survey said that at least 33% of the money they spend on the cloud each year is wasted. Visibility is the main problem. A majority of the executives surveyed (53%) said that seeing how and how much they use the cloud is their biggest challenge regarding controlling spending and reducing waste. One in five (19%) said they couldn’t manage their cloud budget because they don’t have enough visibility into how they use the cloud. Cloud costs are also getting harder to keep track of and understand, leading to overspending: 46% of executives said overprovisioning is the main reason for cloud waste. In comparison, 45% said that cloud assets are spread out among different teams, and vendors are to blame.

David Drai, CEO and co-founder of Anodot, said, “Shifting to the cloud requires a delicate balance between the speed of workload migration and cost control.” He added, “Today, cloud cost management – which is even 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 Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to control and optimize their cloud environments are seeing immediate results and reduced waste, unlocking the true value the cloud has always promised.”

More discoveries:

  • Surprise, surprise: More than a third of participants (37%) were surprised by their cloud costs or had an incident related to cloud costs.
  • Growing Complexity: When asked what the biggest problems are with controlling cloud costs, 53% said that getting a clear picture of cloud usage and expenses is the one. Fifty percent of them said that complex cloud pricing was their biggest problem, and 49% said that complex, multi-cloud environments were the biggest problem.
  • Unnoticed Spikes: Twenty-eight percent of the respondents said it takes weeks or months to notice a spike in cloud costs, and the average time to detect incidents hasn’t changed since 2021.