The popularity of serverless infrastructure, like AWS Lambda, is on the rise, which is easy to understand, given its promise of a cheaper price tag and less maintenance. However, as companies are lifting and shifting apps into lambda, many are discovering that it’s not that simple. Like any shift, such as moving from on-prem to the cloud, the reality is, applications need to be designed a certain way in order for you to reap the cost and efficiency benefits.

Last week, Amazon announced the end of the reserved instance, commonly known as the “RI”, with the announcement of their new replacement, “AWS Savings Plans”.

If your business depends on AWS cloud services, you’re probably familiar with the experience of having unexpected, hidden charges crop up on your monthly invoice. At times, the AWS cost structure can be quite opaque, making it difficult to accurately gauge in advance the costs of hosting a given application. One of the most common sources of unanticipated AWS charges is the service’s data transfer fees.

IDC predicts a ten-fold increase in data by 2025, which should surprise just about no one. We are all producing more and more data every day—more data than ever before, with no slowdown in sight. Recently we joined forces with our friends over at CHAOSSEARCH to deliver a webinar on the topic of Big Data Done Right—How to Spend Less While You Store & Analyze More. In this webcast, we discussed some best practices around big data storage, transfer, and access.

If your company uses AWS, chances are you’ve considered developing a cloud optimization strategy. Since AWS resources can infinitely scale, many organizations find themselves in a conundrum where they’re not using these resources efficiently. However, a good cloud optimization strategy could potentially save an organization thousands, if not millions of dollars per year. Rather than be surprised by one more AWS bill, now is the time to think about your strategy.

If you’re anything like our customers, you’re running the majority of your business on the cloud. After headcount, it’s not uncommon that your cloud bill is one of your highest business expenses. So, it’s important to make sure you are getting maximum returns on that investment. Done right, cloud computing offers major financial and operational benefits for companies.

Cloud computing optimization is a growing priority, as engineering becomes more accountable for justifying growing AWS spend. Companies that are rapidly growing can be particularly vulnerable to large fluctuations in cloud spending, which often seem to strike without rhyme or reason. Getting a handle on cloud cost is a critical first step toward cloud computing optimization, and can result in more efficient and effective systems across the board.

Cloud infrastructure refers to both hardware and software components—ranging from servers to storage to networking and virtualization software—that are required to support cloud computing. Thus, cloud infrastructure optimization refers to optimizing these components for: efficiency, performance, and cost.

Cloud spend optimization is a challenging endeavor for most companies. The major reason for this is that most don’t have sufficient visibility into their live cloud costs, so they can’t tie day-to-day decision-making to those staggering AWS bills that arrive at the end of each month (way too late to make meaningful changes).

Cloud costs can come with significant sticker shock, especially since many businesses do not have an easy way to track or predict actual cost before the bill arrives. However, there are several architectural changes that businesses can make that will help rein in cloud spend. In some cases, optimal engineering decisions should be made up-front, while in other cases certain areas should be monitored over time to identify opportunities to retool architecture and optimize cloud costs.