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Cloud Benefits: Diminished or Eliminated Without Governance

In the ‘race to the cloud’, many organizations are not realizing the promised cost benefits of moving to their infrastructure to the cloud. In fact, many are finding that they are spending far more than they anticipated. While Organizations should save 15% or more by moving to the cloud infrastructure, a 2020 report[1] shows that realizing these savings is not straightforward: 80% of organizations will overshoot their cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) budgets, due to a lack of cost optimization approaches. 45% of organizations that perform lift-and-shift to cloud Infrastructure, without optimization analysis, will overprovision up to ...

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Cloud Cost Optimization: Moving Mountains With Shovels

The front lines of the Cloud Cost Optimization battle are not going well for many. Sadly, the worst part of the story is, that most don’t even know it yet. As Cloud investments go deeper and broader throughout corporate computing environments, so too is the waste and damage to IT budgets. I’ve been in IT long enough to witness hundreds of companies implement and manage thousands of different environments with hundreds of various suppliers. Suffice it to say, I’ve been around. So, when I tell you that waste and overspend on Cloud are at frightening levels, you should pay attention when I share why, and what you might be able to do about it. ...

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Why You Shouldn't Trust Cloud Vendor Pricing Calculators

Dave Young
Jul. 29,2020 | Cloud Azure AWS google

Lately we have seen a rise in cloud customers reliance on widely available online tools that purport to help an enterprise calculate everything from pricing, usage workloads to TCO. Some of the primary tools often cited are: Azure Pricing Calculator AWS Pricing Calculator AWS Total Cost of Ownership Oracle Cloud Workload Estimator Google Pricing Calculator We are here to confirm what your likely first instincts are when attempting to use these tools, which is they are wrong, a futile exercise, and probably biased, given the hundreds of data points and variables in every cloud environment. Wrong First, they are wrong. Always.  Maybe it’s a ...

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Microsoft: COVID-19 Indifference, New Pricing, and Great News (for Microsoft)

The initial outreach and helping hand that many IT suppliers gave at the onset of the pandemic has already faded. Most offers were not only insufficient to have a real impact, but instead locked companies into less favorable deals long-term in exchange for that short-term assistance. We recently wrote another article on this called ‘Look That Gift Horse in the Mouth’. Microsoft has thus far, in our opinion, followed this same path. Despite COVID-19 issues, Microsoft thus far is holding firm on pricing for its Office365 Enterprise Agreement renewals. Further, we see them in many cases offering ‘list price’ and no discounts at all. Breaking ...

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Cloud Compute Herd: 4 Myths That Could Save You Millions

Like a migrating herd of Wildebeest across the Serengeti, companies around the globe continue its rush toward that shimmering lake of Cloud Compute that promises lowers costs, increased flexibility and scalability (and more according to the brochures). As with any panacea, the dream usually falls short of the reality. Cloud compute for many has hit that ‘middle ground’ where actual benefits and unexpected problems meet. As the body of problem evidence mounts for Cloud Compute, there are some clear myths that have arisen that need to be ‘debunked’. Only when these myths are fully understood can organizations minimize the risks and still ...

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4 Tips to Save with Microsoft Now in Covid Response

Unprecedented times for business leaders now as the gears of industry and commerce are basically at a standstill. Most companies have a complete freeze on spending and are contingency planning for things to get worse before they get better. While sometimes there is ‘opportunity in chaos’ so too is the potential to make costly mistakes in our haste to facilitate immediate needs. Today, we’ll be looking at Microsoft and some issues to consider as the economy heads for a downturn. Remote Work: Although remote/home office work is a well-established trend in many industries, others are still grappling with management and cost challenges (not to ...

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NET(net) Multicloud Series, Part II: Pricing and Product Transparency

If you missed Part I - start here. Is a Cloud Broker right for you? A Cloud Broker by definition is an entity that manages the use, performance and delivery of cloud services, and negotiates relationships between cloud providers and cloud consumers. As cloud computing evolves, the integration of cloud services may be too complex for Cloud consumers to manage alone. A Cloud Broker can also be in a unique position to collect, analyze and conduct opportunity assessments on pricing that will be key to a multicloud or Cloud Arbitrage strategy. Generally, cloud arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more ...

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