Day Two Cloud 129: Practical Advice On Optimizing Cloud Costs

Optimizing cloud costs means more than just looking at your bill and hunting down unused instances. It’s about how to understand the full lifecycle of cloud workloads, how to deal with management that wants predictable spending even as your actual usage varies, and how to set up repeatable processes for ongoing optimization. Our guests are Fred Chagnon, Principal Research Director; and Jeremy Roberts, Workshop Director, both at Info-Tech Research Group. We discuss: * The goals of cost optimization * Getting management buy-in for optimization processes and job roles * Communicating cost savings to management * Picking the right metrics * More Takeaways: Cost is just a metric. It can be measured There are tools to do this, but without roles and responsibilities we don’t know who should be using them, and what they should be doing. Sponsor: ITProTV Start or grow your IT career with online training from ITProTV. From CompTIA to Cisco and Microsoft, ITProTV offers more than 5,800 hours of on-demand training. Courses are listed by category, certification, and job role. Day Two Cloud listeners can sign up and save 30% off all plans. Go to itpro.tv/daytwocloud and use promo code CLOUD to save 30%. Show Links: Cloud FinOps – O’Reilly Media @fredchagnon – Fred Chagnon on Twitter Jeremy Roberts on LinkedIn Info-Tech Research Group Transcript: [00:00:00.490] – Ethan [AD] This episode of Day Two Cloud is brought to you in part by It Pro TV, start or grow your It career with online It training from It Pro TV and we have a special offer for all you amazing Day Two Cloud listeners sign up and save 30% off all plans ITPro dot TV slash day two cloud and use promo code cloud at checkout to save 30% off all plans. [/AD] [00:00:31.290] – Ethan Welcome to Day Two Cloud today we’re going to talk about cloud cost optimization. Our guests are Fred Chagnon, principal research director at Infotech Research Group, and Jeremy Roberts, workshop director for infrastructure and operations at Infotech Research Group. And these guys have done research and gone deep on how you optimize cloud costs. That doesn’t simply mean look at your bill and look, we shouldn’t be spending on that. We’re not even using it. I mean, that is a component of things, but they go way more deep because it’s also a cultural thing. It’s a process thing. It’s understanding from the entire life cycle of the workloads that you put into cloud, how to optimize and control those costs, how to deal with management when they are looking for a predictable budget. [00:01:16.180] – Ethan But the way you consume cloud isn’t predictable depending on what your business’s compute needs are from month to month. Ned is not with us today. He had to step out because reasons. And so you’ve just got me as the host. Please enjoy this conversation with Fred Chagnon and Jeremy Roberts of Infotech Research Group. Fred and Jeremy, welcome to Day Two Cloud today. It is lovely to have you both and Fred, starting with you. You pitched this show to us because you guys did some research about cloud cost optimization. So tell us what this research was. Who did you talk to to gather data, et cetera. [00:01:56.010] – Fred Sure.