More clouds, more problems? Cost doesn’t have to be one.

Managing costs in a multi-cloud environment is like preparing an orchestra for a concert, where each instrument needs to be tuned before delivering a harmonious performance.

Your multi-cloud environment requires the same precise calibration to deliver optimal cost performance that hits all the right notes.

This calibration happens on multiple levels. Cloud optimization requires action at both the front end, with cloud provider decisions, and at the back end, where you need a comprehensive view of your entire cloud investment to fine-tune spending. Your cloud objectives help you weigh hyper providers based on capabilities and infrastructure size and invest for the lowest cost and best performance.

These optimization challenges are driving the growth in financial operations (FinOps), a financial management practice focused on cloud spending optimization. FinOps prioritizes cost and usage transparency, accountability for the teams and people spending on the cloud and governance policies and controls to contain cloud sprawl.

AI initiatives make optimization an even greater imperative, and five strategies can support these efforts.

#1: Harness the strengths of each cloud provider

Each cloud provider offers distinct capabilities and specializations. To optimize your cloud investment, you need knowledge of providers and the location of your applications, workloads and other cloud resources. With this information, you can make strategic moves, such as placing resources with the provider that delivers the best value for your specific needs.

Many organizations are motivated by their existing technology investments and strategic priorities. Companies with substantial database commitments often align with providers that offer seamless integration, while organizations focused on emerging technologies gravitate toward providers with robust development platforms. Rather than set cloud rules, your unique cloud utilization determines your resource choices.

Your ambitions should drive your cloud investment decisions. Before FinOps enters the picture, you can commit to aligning your business and technical strategies. Think broadly about what you hope to achieve in the cloud and let desired capabilities drive your actions. After FinOps, you have the tools to make this a reality.

How FinOps helps: The FinOps Foundation introduced the focus initiative to standardize data from multiple cloud providers, making different providers “speak the same language.” FinOps gives you a mechanism and tools for understanding, comparing and compiling the total cost of your cloud investment.

#2: Recognize when on-premises makes more sense

Embracing a multi-cloud environment doesn’t mean only the cloud, and you may opt for a hybrid cloud approach. An option for some workloads is repatriation, where you move applications, services or other resources back to on-premises data centers. Some workloads are less expensive to run in a data center, and keeping them in data centers or moving them back is the best way to achieve your business goals.

Few organizations live entirely in the cloud. The cloud has led to a rethinking of data center operations, allowing you to acquire infrastructure through operational expenditures rather than capital expenditures.

How FinOps helps: A hybrid cloud approach introduces cost-saving opportunities as you place workloads and allocate resources to the cloud or on-premises with efficiency in mind. FinOps gives you visibility across hybrid and multi-cloud environments so you can effectively optimize costs.

#3: Explore optimization capabilities

Within a single cloud, there are mechanisms to help you optimize your costs. Reserved instances allow you to reserve compute capacity for a set timeframe at discounted pricing. This results in more predictable costs for long-term workloads, significant savings compared to on-demand rates and greater flexibility with how you reserve capacity.

Cloud providers also often allow you to identify orphaned resources that cost you in billing charges but no longer deliver business value. This can easily occur when you save data to online resources but never clean them up. Identifying orphaned data and resources helps you extract maximum value from them.

How FinOps helps: FinOps gives you visibility of all cloud capabilities and supports their management through automation, making it easier to ramp up reserved instances and find orphaned resources.

#4: Enforcing governance and accountability

No IT manager wants to get a cloud provider’s bill in the mail and wonder why. However, that can happen if your environment is the wild west, where siloed teams acquire and provision cloud resources without accountability. Organizations need a thorough understanding of the cloud spending of all departments and business units.

Everyone within your organization shares accountability for cloud spend. Embracing a FinOps culture and implementing governance practices increases everyone’s accountability and gives you cost and usage insights to eliminate spending surprises.

How FinOps helps An authentic FinOps culture brings together teams from finance, applications, leadership, procurement and other company specialties to contribute their expertise toward a unified multi-cloud vision.

#5: Plan for the future with cloud forecasting

Optimizing your cloud spending frees up money for future development, growth and innovation. If you don’t identify the trends, you’re looking at only the current month. This can put you over budget and reduce innovation opportunities.

Cloud charges may sneak up on you without forecasting, and your finances may be insufficient to cover your needs. Besides saving costs, freeing up money is another way to optimize. Any money you save on the cloud can be reinvested in other projects to achieve your business goals.  

How FinOps helps: FinOps forecasting tools give you a window into your cloud spending and its trajectory over the next few years so you can make informed decisions about your organization’s future.

Manage your multi-cloud environment effectively

The Unisys Cloud Financial Analysis solution takes the complexity out of the cloud. Explore how Unisys can guide your cloud optimization to power your business growth and learn how California State University saved $15 million a year by reducing and avoiding cloud costs.