Cloud adoption is continuing to grow – and so are cloud costs. Here are some ways to optimize cloud costs for your business.
Auctor purus, aliquet risus tincidunt erat nulla sed quam blandit mattis id gravida elementum, amet id libero nibh urna nisi sit sed. Velit enim at purus arcu sed ac. Viverra maecenas id netus euismod phasellus et tempus rutrum tellus nisi, amet porttitor facilisis aenean faucibus eu nec pellentesque id. Volutpat, pellentesque cursus sit at ut a imperdiet duis turpis duis ultrices gravida at aenean amet mattis sed aliquam augue nisl cras suscipit.
At elit elementum consectetur interdum venenatis et id vestibulum id imperdiet elit urna sed vulputate bibendum aliquam. Tristique lectus tellus amet, mauris lorem venenatis vulputate morbi condimentum felis et lobortis urna amet odio leo tincidunt semper sed bibendum metus, malesuada scelerisque laoreet risus duis.
Ullamcorper pellentesque a ultrices maecenas fermentum neque eget. Habitant cum esat ornare sed. Tristique semper est diam mattis elit. Viverra adipiscing vulputate nibh neque at. Adipiscing tempus id sed arcu accumsan ullamcorper dignissim pulvinar ullamcorper urna, habitasse. Lectus scelerisque euismod risus tristique nullam elementum diam libero sit sed diam rhoncus, accumsan proin amet eu nunc vel turpis eu orci sit fames.
“Sit enim porttitor vehicula consequat urna, eleifend tincidunt vulputate turpis, dignissim pulvinar ullamcorper”
Nisi in sem ipsum fermentum massa quisque cursus risus sociis sit massa suspendisse. Neque vulputate sed purus, dui sit diam praesent ullamcorper at in non dignissim iaculis velit nibh eu vitae. Bibendum euismod ipsum euismod urna vestibulum ut ligula. In faucibus egestas dui integer tempor feugiat lorem venenatis sollicitudin quis ultrices cras feugiat iaculis eget.
Id ac imperdiet est eget justo viverra nunc faucibus tempus tempus porttitor commodo sodales sed tellus eu donec enim. Lectus eu viverra ullamcorper ultricies et lacinia nisl ut at aliquet lacus blandit dui arcu at in id amet orci egestas commodo sagittis in. Vel risus magna nibh elementum pellentesque feugiat netus sit donec tellus nunc gravida feugiat nullam dignissim rutrum lacus felis morbi nisi interdum tincidunt. Vestibulum pellentesque cursus magna pulvinar est at quis nisi nam et sed in hac quis vulputate vitae in et sit. Interdum etiam nulla lorem lorem feugiat cursus etiam massa facilisi ut.
Cloud adoption continues to grow, but so do cloud costs, often exceeding budgets due to inefficient resource management. For 44% of organizations, at least 33% of their cloud spend is wasted each year. That means reducing waste alone could cut cloud costs by a third. However, this can be tough as organizations must optimize cloud spending without compromising performance.
With the right set of tools and a sound strategy, you can optimize costs without sacrificing performance or stability. In this blog, we highlight proven and advanced strategies to control costs while ensuring scalability, security, and operational efficiency.
Cloud cost optimization is often mistaken for pure cost reduction, but it is much broader than that. Cost optimization is about maximizing efficiency and utilization, which ensures that cloud investments deliver maximum value. Cost reduction occurs as a natural consequence but not at the expense of performance or scalability. Cost optimization focuses on the strategic allocation of resources, right-sizing, and resource planning, ultimately lowering cloud costs through smarter spending and true value realization.
In comparison, pure cost reduction measures can be rather drastic and involve downgrading service tiers or potential under-provisioning. This makes cost optimization a more holistic and sustainable way of managing cloud expenses.
Organizations often overprovision compute instances and storage because of inaccurate capacity planning and/or performance concerns. In 2025, this overprovisioning and underutilization is expected to cost companies as much as $44.5 billion, accounting for 21% of total cloud spend. This makes it crucial to tackle resource wastage head-on as a first step in cost optimization.
Track actual resource utilization and provision capacity accordingly. Instead of relying on manual techniques and static provisioning, use real-time analytics and AI-powered rightsizing to achieve your required performance while still being resource-efficient. You can also use custom VM sizes from instance families like Google Custom Machine Types or AWS EC2 FlexCompute to create VMs with the exact CPU and memory configurations your workloads require.
For less predictable workloads, use elastic autoscaling to dynamically adjust capacity based on real-time demand and pay only for the resources you consume.
In terms of storage, move infrequently accessed data to lower-cost storage tiers (e.g., S3 Infrequent Access, Azure Blob Cold Tier, Google Coldline), and automate data lifecycle management to transition, archive, or delete data you no longer need. It will prevent you from unknowingly accruing storage costs.
Pro Tip: Regularly audit cloud workloads using tools like AWS Compute Optimizer, GCP Recommender, Azure Advisor, or third-party platforms like emma to detect and resize underutilized resources.
Cloud providers offer various commitment-based and long-term usage discounts that help organizations reduce their cloud bills. However, relying solely on Reserved Instances (RIs) or Savings Plans results in overprovisioning and wasteful spending. Opt for a strategic blend of different instance types and discount categories – on-demand, spot, and reserved instances – to maximize the benefits of each pricing category and optimize your savings.
Use machine learning-powered forecasting to determine the right level of commitment for different workloads and choose the optimal instance type accordingly. For instance, use RIs for tasks with steady, predictable demand and Spot Instances or Preemptibles for fault-tolerant workloads.
Pro Tip: Analyze past usage patterns and make data-driven, precise commitments for RIs and Savings Plans. Speak to one of our Cloud Solution Architects for a demo, and receive a tailored-made Instance solution.
Spot instances offer the steepest savings (up to 90%) of all instance types, but they come with unpredictable availability and potential interruptions. Typically, these instances are ideal for non-critical or fault-tolerant workloads like batch processing and machine learning training, and background tasks like web crawling and security scans. However, you can use them strategically to minimize disruptions and make them work for a broader range of use cases.
In order to handle interruptions, blend on-demand and reserved instances to have fallback capacity when spot instances are unavailable, and use autoscaling groups like Spot Fleets (AWS) or Preemptible VM Groups (GCP) to seamlessly distribute workloads across multiple instances and regions and automatically replace interrupted or terminated spot instances.
Other techniques include implementing fault-tolerant architecture and checkpointing, where progress is saved at regular intervals and tasks resume from the last saved state when interrupted.
Pro Tip: Automation is a must-have for utilizing Spot & Preemptible Instances. Use orchestration tools like Kubernetes to automatically allocate workloads to cheaper spot instances, handle instance interruptions, and maintain performance.
Adopt event-driven architecture and serverless computing to eliminate idle compute resources and costs associated with always-on infrastructure. Event-driven serverless functions execute only when triggered, automatically scale up and down, and are billed per execution and per millisecond of compute time.
Fully managed serverless platforms (e.g., AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Azure Functions) allow you to scale all the way down to practically zero when there is no demand. As a result, there is no room for idle cost and overprovisioning, and you only pay for what you use.
Pro Tip: Evaluate serverless adoption for unpredictable workloads that can tolerate cold start delays and short execution limits. Set up a call with an emma expert to find out more!
Organizations report that nearly half of their cloud spend is wasted on unused or idle resources. It’s easy to forget about running instances when resources are abundant, readily accessible, and cloud environments are highly dynamic with fragmented visibility. Automating infrastructure lifecycle management can remove orphaned resources just in time to reduce wastage and unnecessary cost accumulation.
You can implement automated start/stop schedules for development, testing, and non-production environments so that resources run only when needed and for as long as necessary. Event-driven architectures further optimize costs by activating compute resources only in response to specific triggers.
You can also set up automated periodic scans and assessments to identify idle or orphaned resources and define decommissioning rules to clean them up before their silent cost accumulation gets out of hand.
Pro Tip: Manually tracking resource utilization across the cloud is nearly impossible. Use tools like AWS Instance Scheduler or emma’s automated policies to optimize infrastructure usage without constant manual intervention.
Cloud cost optimization isn’t just a technical challenge – it’s a financial and operational strategy. Encourage all departments and engineering, finance, and business teams to collaborate on cost governance. Cross-departmental collaboration ensures that cloud spending is considered and optimized at team level instead of being chased after by finance or CloudOps.
A culture of FinOps requires each team and department, including DevOps and development teams, to have the necessary cost visibility and training to make cost-aware decisions when it comes to architectural choices, self-service provisioning, and utilizing available discounts or instance types. Invest in the right tools and resources to ensure that.
Pro Tip: Establish FinOps principles, hold regular cost review meetings, and integrate cost insights into CI/CD pipelines. Speak to one of our Cloud Solution Architects.
Many enterprises lack granular cost visibility, which results in untracked cloud expenses. Granular cost visibility, control, and accountability are fundamental pillars of a strong FinOps culture, where each team should be able to take ownership and control of their cloud spending.
Utilize FinOps tools to implement tagging strategies that allow you to allocate costs and thresholds by team, project, and/or environment. Additionally, adopt chargeback and showback models where cloud costs are reported or billed to individual teams to drive accountability and encourage cost-aware engineering.
Pro Tip: Implement mandatory tagging policies and set up dashboards in a cloud management platform like emma to ensure financial transparency and control.
Data egress fee is sometimes overlooked in cloud budget planning, but it quickly adds up, especially in multi-cloud and hybrid environments. You can reduce internet egress costs by using private connectivity options, such as AWS PrivateLink or Azure ExpressRoute, instead of the public internet.
Another strategy to consider is optimizing workload and data placement. Try to ensure that workloads and the storage they interact with all reside in the same cloud region. By keeping data transfers within the same region where possible, you can considerably save on exorbitant inter-region data transfer costs.
Pro Tip: Regularly audit and analyze data transfer patterns using vendor-native or third-party tools, like AWS CloudWatch, Google Cloud Network Intelligence Center, or emma’s data transfer optimization features – particularly if you use multiple clouds – to identify and optimize costly data movement across your cloud infrastructure.
Compared to static budgets or reactive cost monitoring, AI models can analyze historical usage trends to predict cloud spend, detect anomalies, and prevent budget overruns before they happen. You can set budget thresholds based on accurate cost predictions and receive timely alerts before cost thresholds are exceeded. It allows you to scale down resources just in time and avoid cloud bill shock at the end of the day.
Pro Tip: Use emma’s AI-powered forecasting to predict future cloud expenses, set reasonable thresholds, and prevent overspending.
Many enterprises end up overpaying for software licenses in the cloud (e.g., Windows, SQL Server). Consider license portability (BYOL – Bring Your Own License) where possible, as some cloud providers allow you to reuse your existing on-premise licenses. You can also switch to open-source alternatives for various solutions, eliminating licensing fees altogether.
Finally, analyze your license usage and choose accordingly between fixed-rate subscriptions and usage-based models to pay only for what you use.
Pro Tip: Regularly audit SaaS and cloud licensing models to avoid redundant and unnecessary expenditures.
Cloud costs can get out of control without the right governance and control. Automated guardrails can help prevent budget overruns due to unrestricted resource provisioning or inefficient usage. Set up spending limits and automated alerts to control costs and enforce best practices like periodic compliance and governance checks to prevent costly misconfigurations.
Pro Tip: Use emma’s policy-driven cost controls to enforce budgets, auto-delete idle resources, and alert teams on cost spikes.
Cloud cost management is an ongoing effort that requires real-time monitoring, loads of automation, and deep, cross-department collaboration. End-to-end visibility, granular control, and FinOps best practices can go a long way in controlling cloud costs without sacrificing performance or innovation.
The tools you use also matter. emma’s AI-powered recommendations for workload placement have been shown to reduce cloud bills by up to 75% with data transfer optimization reducing egress costs by 80%. That’s just scratching the surface – emma helps organizations achieve full cost visibility, governance, and automation, all essential for cloud efficiency and cost optimization.
Want to gain full control of your cloud costs?
Try emma today and start optimizing your cloud spend effortlessly!
More in the series:
Realizing Positive Cloud Value and Business Objectives to Maximize Cloud ROI
