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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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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Unbelievably, it’s been four years since we published an article titled: Top Questions to Ask When Taking the Slow Road to SAP (S4) HANA. And despite that passage of time, not much has really changed about SAP’s predictability. We outlined six considerations to weigh before investing further in SAP’s vision of the future. The intent of that article was to invoke questions that would cause SAP customers pause and consider both short- and long-term issues that may have been considered foregone conclusions related to S/4 HANA. There is a famous saying that every history teacher probably says a hundred times a year to students, “Those who fail ...
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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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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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If you are like me, you have been receiving an avalanche of email notifications from every company you’ve ever done business with letting you know how they are responding to the Covid-19 crisis. Did I really need to know how my auto mechanic is responding to the epidemic? Probably not at the top of my list. However, if you can get through the noise, there have been some legitimate offers to help companies support their teams and customers through the crisis. Most of these offers are in the form of free services and software for an extended period of time (30-60-90 days and more). Below, we’ve compiled a list of twenty-three companies and ...
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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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As 2019 drew to a close, many of you may have missed a significant development that came out of the U.S. District Court of Northern California. On December 17th, the lawsuit brought by the Sunrise Firefighter’s Pension Fund against Oracle Corporation for misleading investors on their cloud business – was dismissed. They have until February 2020 to make some changes and refile the case, but what the real take-away from this case is that we can expect ‘business as usual’ from Oracle on the audit front. To get a real sense of just how egregious and critical the audit practice was (and is) to Oracle’s revenue machine, you need only read some of ...
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Do you have AWS Zombies lurking in your environment? If you are an AWS customer, probably you do. AWS Zombies are likely roaming your cloud instances gaining power, destroying all they touch, and if you don’t kill them off soon, they may take over your bills altogether. What are AWS Zombies? AWS Zombies are described as unused (and often hidden) assets that keep contributing to the ongoing costs of your AWS Cloud without producing any value. What are the four most common types of AWS Zombies? 1: Unattached EBS Volumes Clients should seek out and kill AWS Zombies like unattached EBS Volumes: When you provision an Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) ...
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Clients are well advised to include specific language governing Oracle audits. Most important is the ability to purchase any compliance licenses as a result of an audit action at the contractual price hold discounts (#12 on our Oracle's Most Egregious list), and in the event that the price hold expires, at a mutually agreeable discount at the prevailing discounts available in the market for similar deals not to be unreasonably withheld. The current contract language in the standard Oracle agreement requires clients to purchase compliance licenses at list price. In the case of a 75% price hold discount, this would mean you are acquiring the ...
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