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Cloud Cost Management Vendor Profile: Spot by NetApp

As we’ve noted throughout our series on cloud cost and optimization management, choosing a vendor for this practice is no easy feat. A number of companies provide software and services germane to making the most of cloud environments — it’s tough for organizations to sift through all the marketing messaging. Amalgam Insights has taken on much of that footwork on behalf of enterprises, and we continue to present our findings in our series, which includes vendor profiles published in no particular order. This second profile looks at Spot by NetApp.

WHY SPOT BY NETAPP (INCLUDING CLOUDCHECKR) FOR CLOUD COST AND OPTIMIZATION MANAGEMENT

  • Continuous cost optimization, not just one-time, across public clouds
  • Automated platform that reduces burden on operations personnel
  • Includes development, finance, security, and cloud operations based on both in-house development and acquisitions

ABOUT NETAPP

NetApp is an Amalgam Insights Distinguished Vendor for Cloud Cost and Optimization Management. Founded in 1992, NetApp has grown from a premises-based provider of computer storage to its current iteration as hybrid cloud data services company. As of 2021, NetApp employed 10,500 people around the globe, across all of its divisions. The company reported $5.74 billion in revenue in 2021. In 2020, NetApp acquired Spot to gain cloud cost optimization capabilities and enter the cloud cost market. In 2021, NetApp bought cloud financial and operational optimization vendor CloudCheckr, adding those capabilities to its Spot by NetApp portfolio. CloudCheckr reported more than $4 billion in cloud spend under management when NetApp acquired it. NetApp’s cloud cost control and optimization offering targets midsized and large enterprises seeking to optimize cloud costs scaling up to Fortune 500 firms.

NETAPP’S OFFERING

The Spot by NetApp portfolio brings together a variety of organic and acquired capabilities to create a platform that gives professionals in development, security, finance, and cloud operations holistic, cross-departmental insight. The acquired companies include cloud optimizer Spot and cloud cost management solution CloudCheckr. Spot brings expertise in managing containers such as Kubernetes, which can rack up cloud costs quickly. CloudCheckr offers the visibility and governance around cost and security, including the allocation and chargeback of cloud computing costs to specific departments.

Spot shows which aspects of the cloud environment need right-sizing with more than 600 best-practices checks around cost management, security and compliance, usage and performance, and availability. Spot sets parameters to implement and automate recommendations for procurement, finance, security, and IT to all share visibility to the organization’s cloud infrastructure (including containers, virtual machines, data and web applications, and micro-services).

Spot achieves this combination of operational and financial visibility by combining CloudCheckr with its already existing platforms: Eco (for finance), Spot Security (for security teams), Spot PC (for cloud operations), and Elastigroup and Ocean (for developers). CloudCheckr delivers the visualization capabilities and best-practices checks that help assure continuous optimization.

COMPETITION AND COMPETITIVE POSITIONING

The Spot portfolio competes most against do-it-yourself cloud cost optimization and management tools, as well as vendors including VMware CloudHealth and IBM Turbonomic. The company finds that it wins deals among customers seeking a combination of analytics, visibility, automation, and governance and security (via the CloudCheckr platform).

As such, the Spot by NetApp portfolio combines the functionalities that affect cloud spend and governance with process automation to support cloud savings. Furthermore, NetApp provides dashboards and report visualizations for greater collaboration among users.

NetApp goes to market through its direct sales teams as well as a large contingent of managed services providers (MSPs), many of whom came to the vendor through the CloudCheckr acquisition. Capabilities for MSPs include:

  • Automation and streamlining of cloud services billing
  • Ability to offer cloud desktops as a service
  • Improved cloud security and compliance
  • Ability to support a FinOps practice
  • Reserved instances arbitrage, custom rates, and charges
  • White-labeling for interface and reports

NetApp’s reference customers for cloud cost management include Samsung, HPE, IBM, University of Notre Dame, and Sony.

NETAPP’S PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

NetApp intends to keep growing its Spot portfolio. To that end, the company in spring of 2022 acquired Instaclustr, which offers a fully managed open-source database, pipeline, and workflow applications as a service. This purchase will bolster Spot’s capabilities to support cloud operations. NetApp also plans to continue building its MSP channel.

AMALGAM INSIGHTS’ RECOMMENDATIONS

Amalgam Insights recommends that organizations seeking financial and operational control of complex cloud environments consider Spot, either based on the scale of operations (typically $1 million+ annual spend), multi-cloud support, and the importance of cloud computing to the organization’s core operations. Developer teams or smaller organizations can also deploy Spot to target specific projects or workloads. The Spot portfolio, with its automation, workflow management, and analytics, offers insight into four key spend areas of operations — development, finance, security, and cloud. This breadth allows each group to gain visibility into other departments and to coordinate and align efforts to optimize cloud computing environments.

Need More Guidance Now?

Check out Amalgam Insights’ new Vendor SmartList report,Control Your Cloud: Selecting Cloud Cost Management in the Face of Recession, available for purchase. If you want to discuss your Cloud Cost Management challenges, please feel free to schedule time with us.

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Cloud Cost Management Vendor Profile: SADA Vendor Profile

Over the past few weeks, Amalgam Insights has delivered an in-depth look at the state of organizations’ cloud cost management and optimization initiatives, and discussed the challenges associated with improving those activities.

A significant challenge includes choosing the right vendor from among the many. Indeed, sifting through marketing and sales noise proves no easy task. Organizations often don’t know whether they would benefit most by teaming with a vendor directly, or by partnering with a managed service provider or professional services consultant — or by using a mix.

The options quickly become overwhelming for IT, finance, procurement, and other leaders responsible for improving how the organization spends money on cloud computing. In fact, in response (to some degree), some companies still try to manage and optimize their cloud resources through spreadsheets and other homegrown approaches. Manual practices, however, fail the organization. There are just too many cloud services and infrastructure considerations in even a single company to accurately track and manage without automation, tagging, cross-charging, and other imperative capabilities.

Therefore, as part of our continuing efforts to educate end users, Amalgam Insights presents the next portion of our Control Your Cloud: Selecting Cloud Cost Management in the Face of Recession series: profiles of distinguished cloud cost management and optimization vendors.

Each of the companies earning Amalgam Insights’ “Distinguished Vendor” badge has undergone rigorous evaluation through briefings, presentations, and documentation analysis. Over the coming weeks as we publish more vendor profiles, note that we do so in no particular order. With that, we begin with SADA.

WHY SADA FOR COST CLOUD COST AND OPTIMIZATION MANAGEMENT

  • Takes a best-practices consulting approach
  • Offers professional services and fully managed service approach
  • Focuses on helping clients build skills so they can continue saving money independently

ABOUT SADA

SADA is an Amalgam Insights Distinguished Vendor for Cloud Cost and Optimization Management. SADA is a managed services provider (MSP) that supports enterprises. Founded in 2000, the company typically works only with Google Cloud as a managed cloud computing vendor. However, the expertise and recommendations from its cloud cost and optimization team span multiple cloud environments. SADA is based in Los Angeles with offices in Armenia and India; overall, SADA employs around 750 people. The MSP does not disclose its annual revenue, number of clients, or amount of cloud computing spend under management. SADA’s cloud cost and optimization consultants are designed to help clients across verticals who spend more than $2 million per year on cloud computing.

SADA’S OFFERING

SADA does not develop cloud cost or optimization management software. Rather, its consultants specialize in Cloud FinOps (Financial Operations), showing enterprises how to save money — such as running non-production workloads only during work hours. At the same time, SADA’s experts teach enterprise FinOps professionals how to understand and oversee their cloud spending.

SADA delivers its assistance through various professional services packages. For example, the MSP can help configure cloud cost management tools, expose insights, demonstrate how to pull in business intelligence resources such as Tableau, and share best practices with the enterprise’s FinOps personnel. This can include identifying other people within the organization — from departments such as IT and procurement — who should join the FinOps team for the benefit of controlling and making the most of cloud computing spending. Along the way, SADA’s cloud cost management and optimization experts will produce assets such as runbooks and toolkits that clients can refer to as they improve their internal operations.

Standard FinOps services from SADA include in-person consultations, written reports with optimization suggestions, creation of database scripts for BigQuery to improve reporting, assistance in customizing tools such as Apptio Cloudability, and delivering customized runbooks and live enablement sessions.

Each professional service package features a fixed fee for a specific number of months. Pricing depends on which package and how much an organization spends each year. An enterprise typically needs a minimum of $2 million in annual cloud computing expenses to support SADA’s fee structure. SADA aims to save clients several times what it charges but does not make guarantees prior to meeting with clients as the company cannot promise an amount saved until consultants understand the depth of the problems on a case-by-case basis.

COMPETITION AND COMPETITIVE POSITIONING

Because of its people-first, FinOps-only approach, SADA finds that it does not face much competition. It does not compete against platforms at all. SADA’s consultants might work alongside an enterprise’s systems integrator, such as Accenture or Deloitte, but those firms tend to specialize beyond FinOps.

The SADA cloud cost and optimization management team generally finds its customers by word of mouth, through referrals, or from Google Cloud itself. SADA conducts workshops and experience labs with Google Cloud’s own FinOps practice, too. SADA does not publicly disclose its reference customers. However, the company gave Amalgam Insights access to customers so that analysts could verify that SADA serves organizations with multi-billion dollar revenues.

SADA’S PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

In terms of a roadmap, SADA’s cloud cost management and optimization team intends to reach more technical professionals. That way, FinOps principles can carry over more into departments including IT, spreading greater cloud financial discipline throughout the organization.

AMALGAM INSIGHTS’ RECOMMENDATIONS

Amalgam Insights recommends that organizations spending at least $2 million per year on cloud computing consider SADA for FinOps guidance to reduce unnecessary spending if they are seeking to bolster the capabilities of their internal staff. Managing and optimizing cloud spending requires expertise, and organizations can thrive by empowering their own people to handle those requirements. First, though, they need to learn the nuances of what impacts cloud spending and the subsequent best practices for managing those factors, which SADA’s consultants demonstrate and impart.

Consider SADA if your organization is seeking to learn how to manage cloud expenses, but is not in search of a vendor to permanently manage cloud expenses. SADA does not aim to stay within an organization indefinitely to support cloud costs. Instead, the MSP promotes a “teach to fish” ethos so enterprises eventually can become their own cloud FinOps experts. As cloud computing continues to enable new and more business models, products, and services, strengthening the enterprise’s FinOps and IT skills will prove vital to remaining competitive.

Need More Guidance Now?

Check out Amalgam Insights’ new Vendor SmartList report, Control Your Cloud: Selecting Cloud Cost Management in the Face of Recession, available for purchase. If you want to discuss your Cloud Cost Management challenges, please feel free to schedule time with us.

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September 16: From BI to AI (Altair, AWS, Dataiku, Oracle, RapidMiner, Salesforce, Sigma Computing, Snowflake, Tableau)

Updates and Launches

Oracle Brings MySQL HeatWave to AWS

Oracle announced this week that MySQL Heatwave was now available on AWS. AWS users will be able to use MySQL Heatwave for transaction processing, analytics, and machine learning automation within a single MySQL database on AWS. As part of this release, AWS customers will also have access to MySQL Heatwave ML at no additional charge, which provides machine learning capabilities inside MySQL databases. 

Presenting the PyTorch Foundation

Meta announced this week that core AI research framework PyTorch will transition to being managed by the new PyTorch Foundation, part of the Linux Foundation. Initial PyTorch Foundation board members will include representatives from cloud platform providers AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, as well as chipmakers AMD and Nvidia, and Meta itself.  Meta will continue to invest in PyTorch and use it as Meta’s primary AI research framework.

Syniti Adds Data Quality and Catalog Capabilities to Syniti Knowledge Platform

Enterprise data management provider Syniti announced that it had added data quality and cataloging capabilities to its Syniti Knowledge Platform, expanding the rubric of its data management platform’s proficiencies. These new features will allow for more centralized and consistent data management practices. 

Partnerships

Real-Time Data Sharing Comes to the Salesforce-Snowflake Partnership 

Salesforce and Snowflake revealed upcoming data sharing innovations, available in pilot in Fall ’22. Specifically, a new integration between Salesforce and Snowflake will allow for uninterrupted access between Salesforce data and the Snowflake Data Cloud in real time, without needing to move data or perform any data copying or syncing operations. This will permit faster cross-platform unified analytics and personalization of customer profiles. In addition, data from both Salesforce and Snowflake can be visualized together in Tableau, building on Tableau’s long-standing relationship with Snowflake.

Sigma Computing Debuts Snowflake Healthcare & Life Sciences Data Cloud Integration

BI alternative Sigma Computing revealed this week that it had partnered with Snowflake, launching an integration for joint customers on the Snowflake Healthcare and Life Sciences Data Cloud. The Sigma integration will allow healthcare companies a unified data platform, eliminating data silos and remaining compliant with healthcare data regulations while permitting business users to safely analyze sensitive data.

Acquisitions

Altair Expands Data Analytics Portfolio with RapidMIner Acquisition

On September 13, Altair agreed to acquire low-code machine learning and analytics platform RapidMiner for an undisclosed amount. RapidMiner will be integrated with existing Altair tools, including machine learning solution Altair Knowledge Studio, enterprise data platform Altair SmartWorks, and SAS language compiler Altair SLC. 

Hiring

Dataiku Appoints Daniel Brennan as Chief Legal Officer

Dataiku announced Daniel Brennan as their new Chief Legal Officer. Prior to joining Dataiku, Brennan was the Vice President, Deputy General Counsel of Twitter, where he spent over a decade of his legal career, having seen Twitter through its IPO, as well as more recent legal challenges.  Before that, Brennan was the Executive Director, Legal for Dell’s Global Services business unit. 

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Cloud Cost Management Part 5: Understanding Vendors’ Key Differentiators

It should come as no surprise that Amalgam Insights believes that any organization supporting fast-growing cloud ecosystems must oversee those resources with proven software and/or managed or professional services. After all, the benefits typically outweigh any drawbacks executives might associate with partnering with yet another third-party provider. In fact, organizations spending more than $1 million each year on cloud infrastructure and platforms as a service are prime candidates for adopting cloud cost management and optimization solutions

Indeed, not doing so jeopardizes financial, operational, strategic, and governance initiatives. In the face of a global recession, the thread of double-digit inflation, and ongoing investor and executive pressure, controlling costs and making the most of technology will become even more of an imperative. And at a time when cloud computing costs often dwarf the net profit of an organization, rationalizing cloud costs can produce meaningful bottom-line results.

To that end, dozens of vendors specialize in providing software, tools, and services for managing and adjusting cloud computing resources. In some cases, they also deliver related managed services. However, choosing from among the multitude of possibilities does not present an easy task. Amalgam Insights has done the hard work so organizations may understand what makes one vendor different from another. Starting Sept. 15, we will publish a range of vendor profiles. That way, through our series on cloud cost management and optimization, and our report, Control Your Cloud: Selecting Cloud Cost Management in the Face of Recession, end users can gain the knowledge to make the ideal and differentiated choice.

In previous installments in our series on cloud cost management and optimization, we have covered why organizations need to implement these practices and pointed out the features that make vendors sound the same. Now it is time to understand five major differentiators that actually set providers apart from one another.

1. Automated Orchestration for Cloud Workloads

Some platforms automate the tasks that manage workload connections and operations, both on private and public clouds. This is important for easily enabling processes tied to specific workflows and business functions. Such software also provides automated, role-based accesses; this helps organizations better meet security and compliance requirements. And, finally, automated orchestration delivers cost savings — via greater efficiency — that likely will exceed the IT Rule of 30.

Recall, that Amalgam Insights’ IT Rule of 30 states that every unmanaged IT subscription spend category — cloud, mobility, telecom, SaaS, you name it — averages 30% in waste. If the organization spends, say, $1 million a year on technology subscriptions that are not proactively managed, odds are that $300,000 of that is going out the door unnecessarily. In other words, that money amounts to salaries and/or cash that could (should) have been conserved.

Accordingly, automated orchestration for cloud workloads features a great deal of capabilities that contributes to goals for spending wisely and saving money.

2. Budgeting Sources and Forecasting

IT and finance leaders need to understand cloud spending so they can adjust infrastructure and services and forecast accurately. These have grown into even more critical requirements as the world emerges from COVID-19 and faces a global recession. Therefore, Amalgam Insights recommends that companies with little to no experience in managing cloud expenses, accounting, and finance incorporate principles and best practices from organizations focused on cloud cost optimization such as the FinOps Foundation, an industry association that has focused on financial operations for cloud infrastructure and platform.

With that in mind, one of the key capabilities to look for in cloud management software itself is the ability to perform continuous cost optimization. This must be an automated process that scales applications, instances, storage buckets, and other cloud resources to avoid over-provisioning and reduce waste. We say the process must be automated because there are too much data and resources for any human to track manually.

In addition, this automated process needs to happen on a constant basis, ideally meaning multiple updates per day based on real-time usage. Cloud workloads change so quickly that IT and finance need near-real-time visibility and alerts. This way, IT can make adjustments on the fly while finance gleans the information it needs for accurate budgeting and forecasting.

Organizations benefit the most from cloud management and optimization platforms that deliver continuous, rather than intermittent, optimization.

3. Continuous Kubernetes Container Optimization

Similar to the section above, organizations using container management such as Kubernetes will require continuous optimization. It’s too easy for Kubernetes clusters to be over-provisioned, lie idle, or go unmanaged altogether.

Furthermore, a lack of oversight potentially sets the stage for the organization to fall out of compliance with governmental regulations and corporate policies.

Continuous optimization applied to Kubernetes resources, in specific, will support an organization’s goals for trimming or eliminating waste and for shoring up compliance requirements. 

4. Depth of Data to Support Machine Learning

Remember, IT and developers aren’t the only leaders who need to know what’s going on with the organization’s cloud environment. Other line-of-business heads — think finance, procurement, operations, even human resources — need visibility, too, for strategic decision-making. Cloud cost management is a team exercise with the cloud cost or FinOps manager as the hub of a center of excellence to support cloud resources.

This is where it becomes more vital that the cloud cost management and optimization platform gets feedback from the various inputs to improve recommendations over time.

5. Proprietary Intellectual Property

Finally, another differentiator among cloud cost management and optimization platforms comes in the intellectual property on which it’s built. Organizations with proprietary technology may have unique advantages in supporting and optimizing cost and may be able to prevent other vendors from pursuing a similar course of action. Organizations may experience tradeoffs between cost management and application performance or pursue more rapid cloud updates across hybrid cloud environments.

Next Steps

With this blog, and the previous four, Amalgam Insights has explained the need for cloud cost management and optimization, discussed the challenges in front of organizations, presented the areas in which vendors come off as similar, and why, and, here, identified true differentiators. The remainder of this blog series will focus on our profiles of 10 Distinguished Vendors. These independent assessments show how each company sets itself apart from the crowd. These evaluations will come in immensely handy for end users and resellers trying to solve cloud cost management issues. Expect the first profile on Sept. 15.

Need More Guidance Now?

Check out Amalgam Insights’ new Vendor SmartList report, Control Your Cloud: Selecting Cloud Cost Management in the Face of Recession, available for purchase. If you want to discuss your Cloud Cost Management challenges, please feel free to schedule time with us.

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September 9: From BI to AI (AWS, Blaize, Datadobi, Google Cloud, MariaDB, OrionVM, Privacera, Qlik, ThinkData Works)

Launches and Updates

Datadobi Updates StorageMAP to Deal with Orphaned Data

Datadobi has updated its StorageMAP data management platform. The focus of the new capabilities is around dealing with orphaned data – data where the data owner is inactive in the organization’s systems. StorageMAP can now identify data sets with a high amount of orphaned data, allowing companies to remediate said data more easily.

MariaDB and Qlik Partner to Migrate Data Away from Legacy Systems

MariaDB and Qlik have announced a partnership to help migrate organizations from legacy databases to MariaDB products such as MariaDB Enterprise Server, MariaDB Xpand, or MariaDB’s SkySQL cloud database service. Companies will be able to do so using Qlik’s Data Integration platform.

OrionVM and Blaize Present AI-as-a-Service Offering

Infrastructure-as-a-service provider OrionVM has partnered with edge AI provider Blaize, building an AI-as-a-service offering. Blaize’s AI apps will be available on OrionVM’s cloud platform. Key usecases for this include virtualizing Blaize’s Graph Streaming Processor chips for edge AI on OrionVM, creating dedicated AI environments with virgualized GSPs, and developing AI apps without needing to purchase and configure dedicated hardware environments using Blaize AI Studio on OrionVM. 

Privacera Launches AWS Lake Formation Integration, Expands Data Governance Capabilities for Cloud Data Lakes 

Data governance platform Privacera announced an integration with AWS Lake Formation, now in private preview. Data teams will now have access to Privacera’s automated data governance and data access capabilities across multiple popular AWS services such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon RDS.  Users will be able to build data access policies atop AWS Lake Formation, and policy enforcement will include popular data analytics systems such as Databricks. 

ThinkData Works Now Available on Google Cloud Marketplace

On September 7, ThinkData Works debuted its data catalog on Google Gloud Marketplace. Customers will now be able to connect data in their ThinkData Works catalog to AI and data analytics capabilities on Google Cloud.

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VMware Aria Transforms the Technology Lifecycle Management Market

At this year’s VMware Explore, VMware announced the launch of VMware Aria based on three product families: VMware vRealize, CloudHealth by VMware, and Tanzu Observability. Aria brings these three solutions together with a shared graph data store, VMware Aria Graph, to support a combined Aria Hub that provides automation, cost, and observability capabilities across multiple clouds.

VMware was already an Amalgam Insights Distinguished Vendor for Cloud Cost Management prior to this announcement as the market leader in Technology Expense Management with over $20 billion in annual spend under management.

But with this platform, VMware has now created a new category of cloud management that competitors will struggle to match. To read more about this announcement, check out our Market Milestone report, available at no cost until the end of this week.

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Cloud Cost Management Part 4: Why Cloud FinOps Vendors All Sound The Same

Too often, the process of selecting a technology provider — of any kind — unearths more questions than answers. In many instances, vendors’ sales and marketing messages confuse, rather than clarify, because they all sound so similar. This puts IT, procurement, and finance leaders in the frustrating position of trying to identify real differentiators, all while hoping for the best outcomes.

Choosing a cloud computing cost management and optimization vendor offers no exception. As we noted in the third installment in our blog series, most (although not all) of these providers make the same benefits statements to potential customers. So, instead of leaning on hope, Amalgam Insights recommends enterprise buyers use our ongoing guidance to identify important differentiators. We begin by presenting similarities Amalgam Insights has noted in vendor messaging that prove confusing to potential buyers.

4 Areas of Confusing Messaging Among Cloud Cost Management Vendors

Recall that, in the previous blog, we pointed out continuous optimization and automation/artificial intelligence as the first two examples of similarities shared among cloud cost management vendors. The remainder of this installment covers the four additional issues we have pinpointed as challenges for evaluating Cloud FinOps providers. Keeping these aspects in mind will allow executives and line-of-business heads to spot providers’ true differences more easily rather than reinventing the wheel. This will go a long way toward arming organizations with the knowledge needed to develop a vendor selection process that will help narrow down the ideal choice.

1. Container and Service Management

With the emergence of Kubernetes as a mainstream containerization platform, cloud computing can now be deployed more granularly. This makes cost and resource tracking even harder. When a workload is not attached to a specific resource or service, IT has more difficulty assigning it to a project or cost center. Organizations supporting stateless apps need to figure out how to track cloud usage. To meet this challenge, vendors will toss around the buzzphrase “Kubernetes management.” The tracking of containerized compute can be done proactively, optimizing nodes in expectation of workloads or reactive ways that look at the usage. Get insight from the vendor on how they support consumption below the application layer as “container management” is being used in a variety of ways to describe cost, operations, technology, workflow, and/or infrastructure accounting in various ways.

2. Single View of Multiple and Hybrid Clouds

Another commonality among solutions in our Amalgam Insights’ new report, Control Your Cloud: Selecting Cloud Cost Management in the Face of Recession, is that of the single interface. In this report, we focused on cloud cost management and optimization providers that bring together multiple cloud vendors and hybrid cloud resources (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, niche players, private clouds, on-premises hardware) under one roof. Rather than forcing users to access each cloud provider’s interface separately, third-party vendors’ management platforms deliver insight and reporting into each cloud through one portal. This reflects one of the basic benefits of using an independent cloud cost management and optimization platform. A variety of companies in the cloud cost management marketplace are still specialists in one or two cloud platforms. Make sure that your proposed vendor for cloud costs is aligned with your IT architects’ vision for cloud and data center usage.

3. Reporting and Analytics

Every cost management and optimization platform — cloud or not — contains reporting and analytics. The detail to look for is the depth and granularity of analytics, including the out-of-the-box alignment to IT, DevOps, finance, procurement, and other relevant cost and inventory management departments. Analytics can also be supported by algorithmic and machine learning models that help to predict future demand for resources, or that proactively detect potential opportunities for optimization. However, the presence of analytic and reporting capabilities that provide financial and operational visibility into multiple clouds is not in itself a differentiator within the cloud cost management world.

4. Managed and Professional Services

In addition to software, most cloud cost management and optimization vendors offer some level of professional or managed services, as well as help desk. While none of this is unique, the ways in which the services are delivered could be. Organizations will want to vet variances including the following:

  • Hours of Operation
  • Human vs. automated assistance
  • Dedicated or named account resources
  • Cloud provider certifications

Some organizations will require around-the-clock support availability while others will not. Some will have no issue using chatbots to resolve problems while others will want a human. Some will operate well with general assistance while others will opt for personnel dedicated to their account. Finally, some cloud cost management and optimization vendors may not certify all their staff on the various cloud platforms the organization uses.

Knowledge Is Power

Knowing what makes many cloud cost management vendors the same will equip IT, procurement, finance, inventory, and other leaders to pinpoint meaningful differentiators and therefore choose an ideal fit. Amalgam Insights has done much of the footwork for readers. In that spirit, the next blog will cover the key differentiators that analysts have identified among providers. From there, we will publish a number of vendor profiles. Combined, all this information will support organizations’ quests to most ably manage their cloud computing environments, especially as a global recession threatens to hit.

Need More Guidance Now?

Check out Amalgam Insights’ new Vendor SmartList report, Control Your Cloud: Selecting Cloud Cost Management in the Face of Recession, available for purchase. If you want to discuss your Cloud Cost Management challenges, please feel free to schedule time with us.

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Cloud Cost Management Part 3: Exploring Why Cloud Cost Vendors Sound Similar

We Look at Two Ways in Which Providers Message Similarly to One Another

In the first two blogs in our series on cloud cost management, Amalgam Insights dove into why cloud costs are hard to manage and the challenges that impede many organizations from implementing disciplined cloud cost management and optimization. Those installments set the stage for this post, which lays out the value of relying on third-party software and services for cloud cost and lifecycle management. From there, we begin to explore the similarities observed among vendors, so organizations may spend less time and energy identifying the best fit(s).

Wait — Why Use a Vendor at All?

Any technology calls for proper oversight to ensure its best use and to assure optimal financial stewardship for the organization. To meet this need, dozens of companies provision software, and/or professional and managed services. When it comes to cloud cost management and optimization, these third-party offerings intentionally replace in-house counterparts. Surprisingly, a number of global organizations still rely on internal staff and piecemeal technologies to oversee and monitor their cloud environments.

Given the rapidly growing amount of cloud computing consumption, and the cost overages that easily accompany that usage, a homegrown approach must evolve, and quickly. Organizations must gain financial and operational visibility into their cloud environments. That starts by implementing a cross-departmental practice Amalgam Insights frames as Technology Lifecycle Management.

Figure 1: Technology Lifecycle Management

A Cautionary Note

Newcomers to the world of cloud cost control often are surprised to learn that using a cloud cost management and optimization platform may not inherently save substantial amounts of money on an ongoing basis.

In many cases, that is not, in fact, the overarching point.

Rather, the software will give IT — and finance and engineering — the data and recommended actions to make sure all cloud environments are running at their most optimal, are in use, and that they serve the organization’s needs.

Think of the matter this way: managing cloud computing does not mean cutting spending to the bone. Rather, organizations thrive when they support employees with the correct infrastructure and applications. (And, yes, that can call for putting more money into the cloud budget as tech serves as a driver for revenue creation.)

Many enterprises experience significant savings after first deploying a cloud cost management and optimization platform. Ttransforming an uncontrolled or poorly controlled environment into an efficient one will naturally lead to that outcome at first based on the IT Rule of 30. But as optimization continues, those gains fade because the platform is keeping the cloud environment at its most efficient.

Contrary to how it might sound, watching those gains disappear over time by creating an optimized environment actually is the goal. The right vendor will enable the organization to achieve that aim.

With that in mind, we now explore the first two ways in which many cloud cost management vendors end up sounding the same. The next blog will present more similarities among these providers. Amalgam Insights takes this approach so enterprise buyers are empowered to make their vendor selection processes more efficient and productive.

Sifting Through the Benefits Statements

With a couple of exceptions, cloud cost management and optimization vendors tend to make the same benefits statements to potential customers. Yet, once enterprise buyers understand those similarities, they will be better equipped to pinpoint important differentiators. In fact, later in this series, Amalgam Insights will publish a number of vendor profiles. The intent is that, by the time those go live, organizations will have the knowledge to create a matrix that will help narrow down the ideal choice.

Similarity 1: Continuous Optimization

Cloud management platforms must support continuous optimization as cloud performance and transactional activity accelerate, and as companies become increasingly susceptible to peak usage and other cost challenges associated with the flexibility of cloud computing.

The greatest benefits of an always-on optimization effort that pulls billing information directly from the cloud provider are the prevention of overspending and the right-sizing of consumption.

Unless a vendor delivers professional services rather than an actual platform, enterprises have the right to expect the cloud management software to perform constant right-sizing actions on a daily basis, or even more frequently, leading to the best use of the cloud environment. This capability has become table-stakes within any technology management platform and a vendor that overemphasizes continuous optimization may be lacking in other important areas.

Similarity 2: Automation and Artificial Intelligence

Continuous optimization relies on some level of automation, which is vital in a cloud cost management and optimization platform. After all, reducing human intervention is key to achieving more accuracy and efficiency. Given the massive volume of cloud computing billing and usage data, it is not humanly possible to manually check all of the data that comprise a cloud bill — at least, not without automation and an algorithmic-checking approach.

Note this important caveat: Most vendors will refer to their automation as “artificial intelligence,” largely because of the sophistication and modernization the term calls to mind. However, most of the automation in question is actually algorithmic processing with some aspects of basic regression to identify correlation and trends. Amalgam Insights sees that the majority of “AI” in this particular market typically lacks the feedback mechanisms, model training, and ongoing data science required to be considered modern AI. This isn’t necessarily an issue, as cloud computing usage is often driven by discrete and specific business needs or by the developer team’s needs. But the obvious advice here is to always follow up on AI claims, as there is no current standard on what constitutes AI in this market.

Enterprises would do well to inquire about how each platform automates data, and how it learns from recommended and implemented actions. If the software just imports information and populates fields, that — while handy — is rudimentary and standard.

Consider, as well, that a cloud cost management and optimization platform should remove the need for excessive manual manipulation, both to reduce the potential for human error and to foster any intelligence that will help the software learn from actions.

In the next installment, get more insight into more similarities among cloud cost management and optimization vendors.

Need More Guidance Now?

Check out Amalgam Insights’ new Vendor SmartList report, Control Your Cloud: Selecting Cloud Cost Management in the Face of Recession, available for purchase. If you want to discuss your Cloud Cost Management challenges, please feel free to schedule time with us.

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September 2: From BI to AI (CelerData, Fidap, Nexla, Run:ai, StarTree, Teradata)

Funding and Finance

StarTree Raises $47M in Series B Funding

Realtime analytics platform StarTree announced a $47M Series B funding round this week. GGV Capital led the round, with participation from existing investors Bain Capital Ventures and CRV, and new investor Sapphire Ventures. StarTree will use the funding for product development and to grow its sales and marketing capabilities.

Updates and Launches

CelerData Incorporates From StarRocks 

Realtime analytics provider StarRocks announced that they had incorporated CelerData to lead StarRocks development, grow its dev community, and build commercial products based on StarRocks. Forthcoming releases include CelerData Enterprise as an on-prem deployment of StarRocks with added enterprise security features, and CelerData Cloud, a managed cloud service. 

Run:ai Reveals Hybrid Cloud AI Orchestration Capabilities for Atlas Platform 

AI compute orchestration provider Run:ai announced that their Atlas Platform now supports hybrid cloud and multi-cloud AI infrastructure. Atlas provides a centralized panel that abstracts connecting to cloud platforms’ Kubernetes infrastructure, simplifying the process of managing compute orchestration.

Teradata Debuts VantageCloud Lake

Teradata Updates ClearScape Analytics

Teradata made two major announcements this week. Cloud data lake VantageCloud Lake launched on AWS, marking Teradata’s first venture on its brand new cloud-native architecture. It’s intended to be a self-service counterpart to VantageCloud Enterprise, which is designed for a more traditional IT-managed environment. Teradata also announced updates to its analytics platform, ClearScape Analytics. New features include new time-series and machine learning in-database analytics capabilities, as well as an integrated and governed model management framework. VantageCloud Lake is available on AWS now, with availability on other major cloud networks in early 2023; ClearScape Analytics is available today.

Acquisitions and Partnerships

Data Engineering Automation Company Nexla Acquires Clean Data Provider Fidap  Nexla, a data engineering automation company, announced late last week that they would acquire Fidap, a provider of cleansed data. As a result of the acquisition, Nexla will provide ready-to-use datasets, both public and commercial.

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Cloud Cost Management Part 2: Organizations Are up Against Big Challenges in Cleaning Up Cloud Costs — COVID Cleanup, Skills Shortages

The first blog in this series on cloud management and optimization discussed why organizations must make the most of their cloud computing environments – especially as a recession appears likely.

Now, in this second  installment, Amalgam Insights analysts lay out the argument in favor of using third-party software, consultancies, and managed services to achieve optimal cloud management status.

We do so knowing that many executives, fearful of a global economic slowdown, might feel tempted to automatically resist the recommendation to bring on another vendor. Thus, we take a step back to paint a picture of the challenges organizations are up against, and share insight, based on collective years of experience, about why paying to manage the cloud environment will, when done right, deliver the greatest value.

Cloud Management and Optimization: It’s About Much More Than Saving Bucks

As a reminder, almost any cloud management and optimization activity can save costs, at least to some extent. That is, of course, useful to any business intent on conserving financial resources. However, more to the point is that cloud management and optimization should lead to more productive, efficient, and deliberate use of cloud computing. After all, cloud supports remote and hybrid workers, as well as strategic corporate initiatives. Therefore, it must deliver. Rarely (if ever, frankly) do organizations get the most out of their cloud environments by trying to monitor and manage cloud resources through spreadsheets or piecemeal efforts.

In other words, Amalgam Insights asserts that it usually makes sense to spend money on the well-chosen cloud management and optimization tools — tools that support revenue-generating initiatives, whether directly or indirectly. The adage, “Spend money to make money,” rings true here as companies seek to eliminate duplicate resources, select the right storage and compute options for data and workloads, and tweak environments so they perform at their best.

The third-party platforms to which we refer support cloud environments at scale. They remove dependence on ungovernable, internally created spreadsheets, on hastily created Git pages with inconsistent documentation standards, and on disparate notes.

Yet, before teaming with a cloud cost management and optimization software, or a professional or managed services provider, it is vital to understand the challenges all organizations share, as well as those that are more specialized, which may require a more custom approach. After considering all the guidance in Amalgam Insights’ 2022 report, Control Your Cloud: Selecting Cloud Cost Management in the Face of Recession, IT, finance, and data leaders should find themselves well-equipped to identify and choose among the options. (Any enterprise executives in search of independent assistance are invited to arrange a consultation with Amalgam Insights analysts. )

The Enterprise Challenges Addressed By Cloud Management and Optimization

Regardless of size, organizations relying on cloud computing face a variety of challenges, especially in the wake of COVID-19-fueled rollouts. Recall that the pandemic in early 2020 forced most businesses worldwide to increase adoption of cloud computing — whether infrastructure, platform, and/or applications — so they could remain operational amid lockdowns and economic upheaval.

The sudden flurry of deployments often was messy; IT personnel quickly spliced together cloud solutions to keep employees connected so they could work remotely. In most cases, there was little or no time to think about how many cloud environments were running.

Then, as enterprises shifted from full-on crisis to figuring out the New Normal of worker expectations, organizations generally did not pause to assess the state of their cloud environments. This typically came down to a lack of awareness or internal skills.

At the same time, the pandemic created a staff and skills shortage that continues into 2022 and will extend beyond 2023. As an example, a recent Korn Ferry study indicates that, by 2030, the world will experience a human talent shortage of more than 85 million people. The staffing challenge is real. When it comes to evaluating and managing cloud environments, there are simply fewer IT experts available to conduct this work for their employers.

Despite the skills shortage, finance executives have grown more aware of looking into and trying to track cloud computing expenses. Still, this presents another hangup for enterprises that do not manage their cloud estates. The finance department lacks the granularity of data that will deliver the reports and insights needed. These leaders need the information that supports asking the right questions of the IT department about cloud computing outlay — and that helps them allocate charges among business units. Simply put, most organizations do not have usable visibility into their cloud environments.

Assessing Cloud Governance, Security, and Provisioning

Alongside the previous challenge lie two more — an absence of governance and security. Organizations that do not properly manage their cloud computing environments risk running afoul of their own policies, not to mention possibly those of various governments. Many organizations also are enacting environmental and sustainability initiatives. A number of cloud cost management and optimization platforms now support those efforts; spreadsheets cannot.

In addition, speaking to security, cyber threats gain even more traction within unmanaged cloud environments. While responsible cloud stewardship does not guarantee insulation against hacks, an absence of said stewardship almost certainly guarantees a breach.

Finally, many organizations are operating in over-provisioned cloud environments due to a variety of situations — say, employee demands for certain applications, an enterprise’s regional or global footprint, and idle resources.

All of the factors combined make for a perfect storm where the organization overpays even as it jeopardizes governance, security, and budget.

To sum up, enterprises are up against the following cloud computing challenges (see Figure 1):

Figure 1: Key Challenges for Managing Cloud Computing

Yet organizations can — and, Amalgam Insights contends, must — take steps to overcome these circumstances. And with global recession fears mounting, the impetus to do so comes as more pressing than ever.

In the third blog in this series, Amalgam Insights will go deep into the value organizations stand to gain by partnering with a proven cloud management and optimization provider.

Need More Guidance Now?

Check out Amalgam Insights’ new Vendor SmartList report, Control Your Cloud: Selecting Cloud Cost Management in the Face of Recession, available for instant download.