Changing with the cloud

Cloud cost management is hard. A dynamic cloud environment, autonomous teams provisioning IT resources at will, and even changing prices of the resources themselves all complicate cloud cost management. Layer a multi-cloud strategy on top of that and the complexity increases even more. But how come we see companies such as Lyft cutting costs by 40% in 6 months, Etsy achieving a 42% reduction in computing costs, and MicroStrategy optimizing by 30%? Surely cost management appears to be possible.

Cloud cost management is indeed hard but, even more fundamentally, change management is hard. We get so used to the way of doing things. We set up processes, reports, approval mechanisms, and training sessions, then something changes that forces us to re-evaluate and redeploy all our efforts. We not only have to help people understand why things are changing, but we must help people change their behavior to adapt to what’s new.

Cloud cost management is a...