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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.

Market Milestone – VMware Aria Transforms the Technology Lifecycle Management Market with Holistic Cloud Management Capabilities

Title: VMware Aria Transforms the Technology Lifecycle Management Market with Holistic Cloud Management Capabilities

Author: Hyoun Park

Key Stakeholders: CIO, CTO, FinOps Directors and Managers, Cloud Cost Directors and Managers, Platform Engineers, Release Managers, Software Engineering Directors and Managers, IT Architects, VP of IT, IT directors, IT Procurement, IT Sourcing, Technology Expense Managers and Directors

Why It Matters: As cloud platform and infrastructure costs continue to grow over 40% per year and become increasingly complicated with private cloud, containerization, and cloud data growth trends, VMware Aria has created the first holistic hybrid cloud platform designed to manage the cost, operations, and ongoing management of complex enterprise cloud environments.

Top Takeaway: VMware Aria is a transformational management platform allowing cloud managers to bring together asset management, service management, cost management, integration visibility, and workflow automation visibility. VMware Aria’s capability to conduct unit-based economics across the entire umbrella of cloud services along with the relationship analysis and API access that VMware Aria Graph provides is a novel IT management capability that should be immediately considered by any cloud-using enterprise with over $5 million in annual cloud spend, as they will be able to both gain operational productivity advantages and strategic analytic capabilities through this holistic approach to cloud management.

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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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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. 

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An Important Side Note on FinOps and Cloud Economics

Organizations sometimes describe the job of cloud cost management as a “FinOps” role (an abbreviation of “Financial Operations” or “Financial Cloud Operations”) or as a Cloud Economics position. Amalgam Insights finds that there is confusion about these terms. Here’s why.

The common-sense definition of Financial Operations belongs to the Finance team responsible for financial close, budgeting, planning, treasury, tax, and accounting. Meanwhile, the concept of “economics” typically applies to the ecosystem of the production and consumption of value. In many cases, that goes beyond the scope of a standard “cloud economics” role, which focuses on cloud optimization and cost management.

However, in practice, these terms of FinOps and Cloud Economics are often used interchangeably to refer to managing costs, as well as inventory and governance. This is misleading on a variety of levels. The appropriation of “FinOps” to be cloud-specific is confusing enough, especially since a separate “FinOps” is starting to emerge for financial applications used to assist with planning, budgeting, close, consolidation, treasury management, and other financial tasks requiring some strategy, workflow, or collaboration to complete. The Cloud Economics term is a challenge for a different reason: it is an inaccurate term as economics should refer to the financial and business value associated with cloud deployments, including sales bookings and support costs at the microeconomic level and the environmental impact and ecosystem costs at the macroeconomic level. Economics, finance, and accounting are three separate concepts that the IT department needs to understand.

Amalgam Insights acknowledges that this is a common occurrence and hopes this note provides clarity for the reader who may find herself already acting as a “cloud economist” or “FinOps practitioner” based on activity around managing cloud costs while perhaps not being familiar with this terminology. The biggest concern Amalgam Insights has with these inaccurate terms is that the use of these terms may lead to the trivialization of these roles as FinOps or cloud economists are typecast as “cost analysts” rather than personnel who understand the business repercussions of cloud on the business as a whole. Cost analysts are a cost center while business analysts who understand revenue root causes are often a profit center.

In this light, what can FinOps and cloud economics personnel do to avoid being pigeonholed? Here’s Amalgam Insights’ advice.

1) Talk to the finance team in charge of organizing and managing IT costs. Somebody at the finance team has to either articulate the value of IT or rolls IT up into general and administrative costs or cost of goods sold. Understand how IT is categorized in your organization, as cloud may be miscategorized.

2) Understand the full lifecycle of cloud costs. This includes vendor sourcing, contract negotiations, optimization, service rationalization, and the security and governance concerns associated with technology vendor selection. Do not be stuck within one small section of Technology Lifecycle Management within a complex spend category such as cloud unless you are seeking to be commoditized over the next few years.

Finally, understand the economics associated with cloud. ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) is an increasingly important and strategic topic for businesses seeking to improve branding and reduce their risk to any operations that may lead to future concerns. If you want to be associated with economics, understand not just the services and technologies supported but their impacts on the environment and to the service provider. This allows you to be a resource not just for IT, but also for the CFO, Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Procurement Officer, and other strategic vendors.

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Cloud Cost Management Part 1: Understanding Challenges to Optimal Cloud Management

Since the start of COVID-19 more than two years ago, cloud computing infrastructure and platform spend categories have collectively increased 48% per year. That makes the related costs both an outlier in IT and a key target for potential expense reduction, especially as a recession — caused by the pandemic — hovers on the horizon.

 All in all, in 2022, global spending on cloud computing — including infrastructure and software — will total more than $350 billion, according to Amalgam Insights. As such, organizations require expert guidance for making the most of their cloud computing environments while, at the same time, trimming unnecessary outlay.

Cloud Computing By the Numbers

Amalgam Insights estimates that organizational investments in cloud computing infrastructure and platform services will continue to increase 25% per year for the rest of this decade. The reasons for shifting to cloud technologies mostly tie to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and concurrent digital transformation and modernization projects that support workforce flexibility.

The reality of that momentum shows in the 48% annual growth of public IaaS and PaaS from 2019 to 2021, based on estimates from Gartner, IDC, Apps Run the World, and Amalgam Insights’ research that represents a $90 billion increase worldwide.

And a third of that $350 billion total is waste.

Understanding the IT Rule of 30

Amalgam Insights has done the math that demonstrates that unmanaged IT spend categories average 30% waste, due to the inherent lack of governance, sourcing immaturity, and lack of expense visibility. Given that public cloud computing constitutes a spend area covered by the IT Rule of 30, organizations are collectively spending billions of dollars unnecessarily. In the cloud computing world, waste often creeps up due to service duplication, and the unmanaged growth of production and sandbox resources. The combination leads to outsized cloud computing bills ripe for optimization and management.

 Deterrents to Good Cloud Computing Governance

Because cloud computing represents the fastest growing subcategory of technology spend in most businesses, this outlay requires strategic oversight from the finance, IT, revenue, security, and governance departments.

But consider some of the common barriers organizations face:

•       Finance and line-of-business executives in charge of budgeting need to understand that cloud computing costs are nuanced and cannot simply be slashed in proportion to the budget as a whole;

•       IT must choose and manage platforms, and assign and monitor users and consumption;

•       Software development and IT architects need to tag and track resources as cloud computing services are spun up and down;

•       Data experts have to ensure that the organization’s information within the various cloud resources stays in line with privacy laws such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act in Canada.

Finally, we discuss three other important realities that hamstring a cohesive and effective cloud computing management and optimization strategy.

 Ch-ch-ch-Changes

First, cloud vendors tend to create new services rapidly with little to no prior notice — and they retain the right to change billing structures on an ad-hoc basis. For example, Amazon Web Services alone has 226 products across analytics, compute, containerization, database, developer tools, machine learning, networking, security, storage, and a variety of other technical capabilities. The vendor usually adds 20 or more new products every year. 

Even if adjustments benefit end users, they can prove hard to track. That means organizations can have a hard time ensuring that even just a single vendor’s billed costs match actual consumption and contractual terms. Imagine what happens when an organization relies on multiple cloud providers.

Inconsistency

Along those lines, the second challenge lies in using the data delivered by the cloud providers themselves. While the information — which can comprise usage, expenses, taxes, permissions, and consumption by user for each product — is vital, Amalgam Insights’ big caveat is that cloud computing vendors do not usually maintain consistent detail. This makes defining services ownership and usage — especially across specific projects and employees — difficult. After that, the burden of accurate project and departmental tracking falls on how well the organization has set up internal tags and tracking — typically a hit-or-miss proposition.

Siloes

The third is that when organizations institute cloud computing management and optimization, they tend to do so through software and managed services specific to the various components of cloud computing — think items including infrastructure (e.g. virtualized desktops, containerized workloads), software/applications, storage, compute, and networking. Such a siloed approach contributes to ongoing lack of visibility and communication among decision-makers, and sets the stage for less-than-optimal stewardship of the cloud environment.

Overall, these financial, operational, and governance requirements create complexity that can quickly morph into a full-time job for a software developer, cloud architect, or data manager. And each of these professionals is likely being paid handsomely to help grow the company — not track inventories, bills, and service orders. (Learn more in our companion piece, “An Important Side Note on FinOps and Cloud Economics”)

Tackling the Cloud Computing Management and Optimization Problem

For the most part, organizations recognize the need to better
manage their cloud computing environments. The impetus to do so increases amid
the threat of a global recession. Amalgam Insights contends that organizations — especially those using hybrid clouds or multiple public clouds — can gain significant
value, even during a worldwide economic slowdown, by using third-party
management tools. These platforms (and in many instances, associated consulting
and managed services) offer the cleanest insight into the cloud environment
while simultaneously assuring the wisest spending and delivery of more
sophisticated services to corporate and external clients.

In Part 2 of this series, Amalgam Insights will discuss the reasons to turn to a third-party cloud computing management and optimization partner, versus trying to go it alone and/or rely on vendor-generated data.

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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August 19: From BI to AI (Alteryx, Collibra, Cloudera, data.world, Explo, integrate.ai, InterSystems, Omni)

Funding and Financials

Customer-Facing Analytics Solution Explo Raises $12M Series A 

Customer-facing analytics solution Explo has raised $12M in a Series A funding round. Craft Ventures led the round, with participation from Amplo VC and Felicis Ventures. Explo will use the funding to further their product roadmap.

Unified BI Platform Omni Emerges from Stealth, Raises $26.9M in Funding

BI platform Omni launched publicly this week with $26.9M in funding. Redpoint led the $17.5M Series A, with participation from First Round and GV. A seed round was raised back in April, led by First Round, with participation from BoxGroup, GV, Quiet Capital, Redpoint, and Scribble Ventures. Omni was founded by Looker alums Colin Zima (Chief Analytics Officer) and Jamie Davidson (former VP of Product), and former Stitch CTO Christopher Merrick. 

Updates and Launches

Cloudera Launches First All-in-One Data Lakehouse Cloud Service 

Cloudera launched Cloudera Data Platform One, an integrated SaaS data lakehous solution. CDP One includes cloud compute, cloud storage, streaming analytics, machine learning, and security under one roof, on private single-tenant cloud infrastructure, with the aim of permitting secure self-service analytics and exploratory data science in the cloud. CDP One is currently available on a limited basis, with wider availability planned for later in 2022.

data.world Announces Eureka Explorer Lineage

Enterprise data catalog data.world debuted Eureka Explorer Lineage this week, a data lineage product built atop data.world’s knowledge graph. Eureka Explorer Lineage shows the flow of data from source to analysis, revealing where data is sourced, where it’s aggregated, and whether or not it has been transformed at any point. Explorer Lineage also uses the knowledge graph to map data to business concepts, making it easier for nontechnical team members to understand what their data is saying.

integrate.ai Releases Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning and Analytics Platform

SaaS company integrate.ai debuted its machine learning and analytics platform, focused on preserving the security and privacy of sensitive data while still allowing machine learning and analytics capabilities to be performed. Machine learning traditionally requires centralizing and aggregating data sources, which may not be possible with certain types of data. integrate.ai works via federated machine learning, which allows data to remain distributed while being analyzed, and the aggregated end results maintain the privacy of the original data.

InterSystems Announces Numerous Updates to IRIS

InterSystems announced new releases for its data platform IRIS. The additions of Embedded Python and IntegratedML to IRIS will accelerate and simplify creating smart data fabrics. InterSystems also announced better collaboration facilities for data analysts and data scientists to make their work usable by each other without having to move the underlying data at any point in the process. Improvements to Adaptive Analytics were also released, allowing business users to more easily explore data ad hoc.  Finally, InterSystems announced a partnership with data intelligence platform Collibra, allowing customers to take advantage of Collibra’s data governance, privacy, and quality capabilities.

Hiring

Alteryx Names Steve Brodrick as Chief Transformation Officer | Alteryx

Steve Brodrick joined Alteryx this week as their Chief Transformation Officer. Brodrick comes to Alteryx from Stanley Black and Decker, where he focused on financial and transformation efforts over the last 20 years. Brodrick will report directly to Alteryx President and CRO Paula Hansen

Amalgam Insights 2022 Vendor SmartList for Cloud Cost Management

Amalgam Insights announces the publication of the Vendor SmartLIst “Control Your Cloud: Selecting Cloud Cost Management in the Face of Recession.” This research report analyzes software solutions that identify, track, and optimize Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service spend at a time when these cloud computing spend categories have collectively grown 48% per year during the COVID-19 pandemic, making these costs both an outlier in IT as well as a key target for potential cost reduction.

This report also identifies 10 Amalgam Insights’ Distinguished Vendors in Cloud Cost Management that successfully differentiate from a pool of 29 vendors originally considered for this report based on their offerings, roadmap, and results confirmed by reference customers: Apptio Cloudability, Cast AI, CloudBolt, IBM Turbonomic, Kion, SADA, Spot by NetApp, Sync Computing, VMware (CloudHealth), and Yotascale. Each vendor is profiled with key differentiators, offering, competitive positioning, future roadmap, & Amalgam Insights’ recommendations for engaging each vendor.

(Note: This report is currently only available for purchase or accessible for current Amalgam Insights clients)