Cloud computing is one of the great technologies of our era. As such, enterprises everywhere are in a hurry to migrate to the cloud. However, one of the less-talked-about trends of our time is cloud repatriation: the process of enterprises reversing their decision, leaving the cloud, and returning to an on-prem setting. According to TechTarget, 85% of enterprises reported plans of repatriating their workloads from the public cloud in 2019.

A fundamental requirement for building a profitable product is finding ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency. When you’re operating in the cloud, it’s almost impossible to gain this insight without data. This is where data-driven software development comes in. Data-driven development is a software engineering approach that relies on data to guide the development process.

Organizations using Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud traditionally leveraged Reserved Instances (RI) to realize cost savings by committing to the use of a specific instance type and operating system within the AWS region. Nearly 2 years ago, AWS rolled out a new program called Savings Plans, which give companies a new way to reduce costs by making an advanced commitment of a one-year or three-year fixed term.

The cloud is today one of the most expensive resources for any modern organization, second only to employee salaries and overhead. According to recent research by Gartner, end-user spending on public cloud services will reach $396 billion in 2021 and grow 21.7% to reach $482 billion in 2022. By 2026, Gartner predicts public cloud spending will exceed 45% of all enterprise IT spending, up from less than 17% in 2021.

If you are fine using a conventional cloud cost management tool, Apptio's Cloudability can be a helpful tool. It promises to enable DevOps, IT, and finance to optimize cloud resources for quality, speed, and cost. A large business with a high cloud spend, a team of 5-10 engineers, and a budget for expert guidance is an ideal match for Cloudability.

According to Amazon, On-Demand Instances are best reserved for short-term processes with uneven workloads that cannot be interrupted. This might partly explain why such EC2 instances are exceedingly popular with AWS users. On the flip side, however, it turns out that On-Demand Instances are also getting dumped for the sake of cloud cost optimization. Our recent Spot Instances guide, for instance, advises AWS users to consider making a switch and, consequently, enjoy up to 90% cost savings.

Thinking about using Google Dataproc as your cloud vendor? We can see why. Google Dataproc is a powerful tool for analytics and data processing, but to get the most out of it you have to ensure you use it properly. We’re going to explore five best practices you can use to lower your Google cloud costs while maximizing efficiency: Following these tips will ensure the best performance and help keep your cloud costs in line.

EC2 instances come with a spider web of charges — when you take a look at your bill, you’ll see there are hundreds of unique line items connected to your usage. In addition to the instance, you’re also billed for storage, data transfer, and networking associated with that instance. It’s important to fully understand those charges so you can find ways to optimize your costs.

Over the past decade, businesses have flocked to the public cloud, with the promise of faster innovation, improved scalability — and of course, cost savings. Yet for many companies, the reality of cloud migration has been a different story. CFOs are blindsided by high costs and uncontrolled spending. Meanwhile, engineering teams struggle to justify and explain their spend — often frustrated that finance doesn’t understand, even when spend is growing healthily along with the business.

FP&A is a strategic part of the finance organization and has the potential to drive important business outcomes. When done right, it can have a major positive impact on the future of the business. When done poorly, it can slow a company down. The role of FP&A has evolved. Today it isn’t just about taking inputs and crunching numbers — it’s about being a strategic advisor to the organization.