In this final segment of our ongoing series about right-sizing public cloud instances for optimal performance and cost efficiency, we are focusing on a common source of cloud overspending: deadwood. Idle or zombie instances plague many public cloud environments, insidiously wasting your opex budget dollars. This deadwood can occur without you even realizing it, and …

How to Eliminate Deadwood in AWS, Azure, & Google Cloud Platform Without Risking Disaster Read More »

In previous blog posts we’ve discussed the challenges organizations face in choosing the right cloud instances, and how understanding workload patterns is critical to right-sizing public cloud instances for optimal CPU and memory efficiency. In this post, we’ll look at a key aspect of instance selection that plays a critical role in optimizing AWS, Azure, …

How to Modernize Public Cloud Instances to Stop Leaving Money on the Table Read More »

Of all the reasons to move to public cloud solutions during the past decade, reducing computing costs has perennially ranked as a top driver. That remains true today – in its most recent cloud computing survey of more than 900 IT decision makers, IDG Enterprise found that 42% cited lower total cost of ownership as …

Why Controlling Public Cloud Costs is so Difficult & What to Do About It Read More »

In our last blog post in this series, we discussed how to overcome the “bump-up loop” in which you continually increase CPU resource allocations in public cloud instances, even when it isn’t needed. In this blog post, we’ll look at another cloud resource management challenge: memory. Sizing memory appropriately is extremely important because memory is …

How to Size Your Cloud Instances for Memory Read More »

In the first blog in this series, we looked at why it’s so important to look at an application’s workload patterns when sizing for any public cloud, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and others. In this post, we’ll look at another common pitfall that we call the cloud instance bump-up loop. Here’s how …

How to Avoid the Sneaky (and Costly) Public Cloud Instance “Bump-Up” Loop Read More »

Organizations are moving application workloads to public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) in droves. After all, it’s a cost-effective way to get things done, right? Not necessarily. In reality, many organizations are overspending and overprovisioning their cloud instances is a key reason why. Analysts predict that by 2020, 80% of organizations will overshoot their …

How to Choose the Right Public Cloud Instances to Reduce Costs and Optimize App Performance Read More »

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) research shows that approximately 50% of public cloud customers are complaining about significant cost overruns in their monthly public cloud bills. 36% indicate that they only have an incomplete understanding of public cloud cost and 38% admit that they are not able to predict public cloud performance and compliance. The fact …

Lowering Public Cloud Cost without Loading Up on Risk Read More »

Standard Robotic Control theory makes a distinction between reactive control, which is fast and simple, and predictive control, which is much smarter. Reactive control is designed to respond quickly to get you out of trouble, while predictive control is designed to understand exactly what you are trying to accomplish, and provide precise actions to enable …

Optimal Infrastructure Control is both Predictive & Realtime Read More »

As organizations move to host their application workloads across private, public and hybrid clouds, the question of where to host workloads, what kind of infrastructure resource is required, and how much to buy is rapidly becoming more complex. This reality, and the need to make safe and optimal hosting decisions regardless of where workloads are …

IT is now the cloud broker. Here are 3 priorities for doing it well. Read More »

In my blog post Best Practices for Cloud Migration: How to get it right I laid out a four-step process for migrating application workloads to a hybrid cloud, using analytics to optimize decisions. In this post, I will focus on the critical first step in that process: determining which workloads are good candidates for the …

Best Practices for Cloud Migration: Step One is Qualifying Candidates Read More »