In the past, it might have been difficult to imagine a world where cloud-based software and apps were so common. Nowadays, you can book a ride with Uber or Lyft, stream your favorite music on Spotify, collaborate with coworkers on Slack and more. This is all thanks to the utility power of the public cloud. It has empowered companies to scale their operations and services across the nation or globe in a fraction of the time they would have needed to invest in hardware to make it happen.
To take full advantage of the cloud’s utility power, businesses need to implement a smarter approach to cloud utility management. But it’s not enough to simply execute operational tasks, like turning off unused instances of a given application. A complete and holistic approach to cloud utility management is required to drive down costs, avoid shadow IT and make cloud consumers care about their spending.
For starters, companies need to design their architecture for maximum efficiency and reduce waste by ensuring that their IT resources are properly allocated and tuned. This can be done with a heat map, which shows the peaks and troughs of computing demand and helps identify opportunities for optimizing resources without overprovisioning or underprovisioning.
It’s also essential to choose the right pricing models when getting started with utility management. At this planning stage, prioritize flexible, low-commitment models to avoid overbuying and allow for changes as you gain a clearer picture of your requirements. cloud utility management