Using the cloud shouldn’t break the bank. Therefore, a more customized experience could offer greater savings.

When looking around, it's clear that costs are going up for multiple industries. Inflation, supply shortages, and other economic upheavals are creating new problems for companies to address. Unfortunately, the IT industry is not immune, especially when shortages of microchips and other supplies are affecting the bottom line.

It’s no wonder that companies which are using cloud services are finding the cost to be more daunting than what they thought they signed up for. However, this does not mean that everyone must suffer the same kind of cost inflation for their cloud services.

Rising Cost of Cloud

There has been an obvious trend toward more cloud computing, as companies find new ways to do business to address the challenges of growing costs from inflation. This means finding more efficient solutions for an ever-changing market.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) has predicted that by the end of 2022, cloud spending will outpace non-cloud IT infrastructure spending for the first time. Part of this growth has shown a shift in focus from short-term requirements to more long-term growth. This means that some of the initial cloud investments made by companies are now finding a tighter squeeze at the margins as their growth and scale, while initially aided by the cloud, are no longer matching the cost of the cloud.

As stated, there is no singular reason for the increasing costs of cloud services. The multitude of factors can come from any direction. Therefore, for the companies looking toward the future and questioning their cloud investments, the answer may not be a simple solution.

How the Cloud Still Saves Money

One of the first things that should be said is that the companies feeling the squeeze from cloud costs may not be properly utilizing, or even possess, a FinOps strategy around the cloud. If this is the case, their cost savings from the cloud may never be realized, since the tool being deployed isn’t being put to proper use. With that said, cloud services still offer incredible savings in multiple areas.

Companies still benefit from fully utilized infrastructure, with the cloud providing a natural economy of scale to allow businesses to only pay for what they need. Hardware and software costs are significantly reduced, as these resources no longer require continuous investment to match their growth.

These savings on infrastructure also translate to lower costs on power and lower costs on staff. Cloud vendors can take on the responsibility of better IT management and resource management, as the cloud automates processes backed by teams of experts.

Why Pick a Bespoke Cloud Platform

While the hyperscale providers may offer tools with incredible flexibility, most companies are recognizing a disconnect between how they planned and allocated resources for the cloud versus the reality of their current fiscal situation. Many companies were forced to adopt the cloud, and may not have properly budgeted for the continued operation and the resources required.

There is a trend in more companies shifting away from the "box of parts" approach offered by the hyperscale cloud services to more boutique vendors to achieve greater savings. On the surface, this may seem paradoxical, as a custom-tailored solution will almost always be more expensive than the off-the-rack option. However, upon further examination, the potential savings far outweigh the up-front costs of most cloud services, especially for the services offering competitive pricing.

A more bespoke cloud platform can offer everything you could want from a hyperscale cloud provider at a significantly reduced cost. This means that both the initial savings and the future savings from greater efficiency can free up your business to better focus on its core objectives.

The premier cloud platform, CloudKey^SM, is this very solution. It is the bespoke cloud platform that offers similar services as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud at a reasonable, fixed price that beats other overly-inflated packages. While the hyperscale providers will find any new service added on to overcharge, many of the desired aspects for the CloudKey platform are already included in the base package. Reach out today to receive a consultation from one of our experts and start saving now.