How to Reduce and Manage Cloud Costs
When you know what’s going on in your environment, you can better control the costs.
If you’ve ever organized a garage sale, you know it’s surprisingly easy to come up with a considerable pile of stuff to get rid of. You soon realize that it’s often more expedient to keep things around than to figure out what to do with it all. That’s how you end up with items you hardly use squirreled away in drawers, stacked up in the garage, or occupying shelf space. It could be that the only time you think about the cost of keeping all that stuff is when you have to move or pay for a storage unit…or when you trip over it.
When your company’s storage space is in the cloud, and it’s virtually unlimited, the extra-stuff dilemma is more than just an inconvenience. Now we’re talking about real money. While it can be tempting to add capacity as data volume and computing needs increase, failing to right-size or re-size your cloud commitments regularly can quickly lead to ballooning costs. This means you should always identify unused or dormant resources; archiving obsolete mailboxes, and clearing old or redundant data files. But where to start?
You wouldn’t simply throw away everything in your garage, would you? Similarly, the answer is not to indiscriminately toss data or applications from your cloud environment. But with assessments, you can pinpoint areas of actual cost savings and bring them to the attention of company decision-makers.
Reduce cloud costs with IT assessments
When you know what’s going on in your environment, you can better control the costs. Cost optimization assessments give you a clear picture of how licenses, applications, and resources are being used so you can create an action plan with real results. Here’s what you can do with Voleer assessments:
Monitor consumption of your Microsoft 365 applications. You may find licenses you’re paying for that are not being used effectively. This allows you to pinpoint areas to reallocate the licenses or provide training to promote the adoption of applications and increase efficiency.
Make sure you have only the licenses you need. Without a systematic approach, many companies end up with unused Microsoft 365 licenses that have been assigned to employees who’ve moved on. Periodic cleanup will keep your software license budget under control.
Archive mailboxes and free up storage space. Inactive mailboxes can be identified and archived to a .pst file, which doesn’t impact the size of your mail server. Voleer even has an automation that can archive everything, so it doesn’t take up room on your system.
Assess how your Azure resources are allocated with the Voleer VM Disk Cost Visualizer. This assessment gives you both a big-picture view and actionable detail, putting you more in control of your computing resources.
Stay on top of your cloud management
Schedule your cloud cost optimization assessments monthly or quarterly to track and report on the state of your environment. You’ll receive visual reports that are easy to understand and share. Voleer puts you in control, giving you a proactive view into changes that can increase efficiency and drive down costs. Rather than waiting for someone to question the cost of computing resources, you’ll be the one targeting areas for cleanup and right-sizing.
With the information provided in the Voleer assessments, you can lead conversations about user adoption of new applications, data retention policies, and how to address redundant or obsolete tools. This shifts the view of IT from cost center to cost-conscious and potentially helps to uncover savings that can be reinvested in new initiatives.
MSPs – bring the power of insight to your customers
Voleer assessments are also an excellent way for MSPs to add value to customer relationships. You can set up recurring compliance and risk assessments to deliver to your customers as frequently as they want – all for a single subscription price. Read more about supporting customers with Voleer in this blog post: MSPs: Increase Customer Satisfaction with Voleer Assessments.
With a clear view of your environment, IT assessments allow you to manage, control, and reduce cloud costs. Contact our sales team for a demo!
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