Does Cloud Really Save Money?

Among the promises of cloud computing was that it would save organizations money by avoiding lots of upfront capital investment in hardware and software. As adoption has grown, users are finding they also are wasting lots of money. 

A study by 451 Research, for example, finds 36 percent average savings can be obtained--but presently are not--simply by using commitment discounts. 

Infrastructure as a service spending is about 13 percent higher than otherwise would be the case if such discounts were widely taken, 451 Research argues. 

source: Virtana

Some 82 percent of organizations with workloads running in the public cloud have incurred “unnecessary” cloud costs, a study conducted by Arlington Research and commissioned by Virtana also finds. 

Some 72 percent of professionals (or IT organizations) report they are fed up with piecing together data from multiple IT operations tools, the study says. 

Furthermore, 70 percent of professionals say IT’s ability to maximize business value is hindered by silos across teams

Disjointed tools are among the sources of friction. About 62 percent of respondents report having to cobble together multiple tools, systems, and custom scripts to get a global view of cloud costs.

About 72 percent of respondents said they are frustrated with a piecemeal approach to management tools to monitor and manage everything from infrastructure performance to cloud cost and migration readiness. 

Some 68 percent of all respondents stated that their teams operate in silos and 70 percent said that limited collaboration hinders their ability to adapt quickly and improve business outcomes. 

Fully 82 percent of respondents have incurred unnecessary cloud costs. Some 56 percent of respondents say they  lack programmatic cloud cost management capabilities, which can mean either that teams are spending too much time managing cloud costs or that cloud waste is allowed to continue. 

86 percent of respondents said they cannot get a global view of cloud costs within minutes. Some 40 percent cannot get such results  within hours. 

71 percent of respondents said that limited visibility across the hybrid cloud environment hinders their ability to maximize value and creates inefficiencies and wastes time. 

About 66 percent of respondents reported it is hard to understand if they are delivering the service levels the business needs. When there are issues, 65 percent say they are hard-pressed to identify the business impact.