By Sujay Maheshwari — Dec 4, 2020

Blogs, Podcasts, and Videos to learn from to optimize your Cloud Cost

Resources to learn from to optimize your Cloud Cost

Introduction

There are many blogs, podcasts, and videos to choose from if one needs to optimize cloud costs. Firstly we need to know what is cloud cost management, also known as cloud cost optimization. It is simply organizational planning that allows an enterprise to understand and manage the needed costs and which are associated with them. In Cloud Technology, this means finding out a cost-effective way to maximize cloud usage and cloud efficiency. With increasing complexity in cloud infrastructure, cost becomes opaque and difficult to track. The “pay for what you use” model is used by most public cloud providers.

Moreover, it adds to the difficulty in the usage of cloud infrastructure. If it is monitored and managed appropriately, this model can result in significant savings for the organization. Still, it is also easy for the costs to spiral out of control.

A list to learn from

We can consider a list of blogs, videos, and podcasts which will help us immensely in optimizing costs for the cloud environment, some of which includes:

ConvertKit: Engineering

ConvertKit is a growth hack startup, and we are referring to their blog. It is a company that has gone a long way in a very short time. The words’ way’ and ‘time’ in my context usually refer to a company’s lifetime. They have published their AWS bill for the world to see, and their engineering team has also released multiple write-ups on what they are spending and how it will change over time. Such posts are great to read if one is looking for companies thinking about cloud optimization and comparing how they need to prove their capability in cloud management systems. They also have blogs on such topics ranging from fixing fragile rail tests to CI/CD processes.

Gross margins matter by two sigma ventures

This is a DevOps-based startup that believes in treating cost optimization of cloud environments very effectively. They believe that overloading the cloud environment is always a loss. Building it as the organization expands will always be cheaper than dealing with it all at once. Two Sigma ventures blog is one of the most business-centric blogs on this list. This particular article describes ways to manage cloud costs in a growing business. Simultaneously, it also tackles questions about whether or not one can improve their margins as they scale.

Screaming in the Cloud

This is a podcast by Corey Quinn who describes cloud cost with AWS in weekly podcast streaming. The podcast is all about the cloud environment, frequently focusing on building technical and conceptual content that attracts many engineers. Corey Quinn covers topics ranging from AWS consulting the nonsense of right-sizing instances to the various impacts of cloud computing on climate change with new episodes coming out every week. Corey Quinn is one of the most active podcasts to be heard if one wants to know more about cost optimization in cloud environments. Some of the honorable mentions include ‘the intersection of finance and cloud engineering’ and ‘last week in AWS.’

Cloudonaut.io

This is a blog and podcast, which is a self-described launchpad for AWS. Its co-founders Andreas and Michael Wittig are independent cloud consultants who accelerate the serverless journeys of various startups and enterprises. They are also said to co-author the comprehensive guide called ‘Amazon Web Services in action.’ They usually cover topics like AWS savings plans and avoiding S3 data leaks. Some of the honorable mentions include ‘AWS cost optimization 101’ and ’10 success factors for starting your cloud journey.

ZDNet

This is an online magazine that is a joint outlet for CBS Interactive and TechRepublic. Being a gold mine of online tech news, they have a highly active and informative cloud category controlling a network of more than 50 blogs whose topics range from ‘Gadgets and software’ to ‘security and its research.’ They have featured stories on open source in the cloud and data center spending and various other topics being highly active. The cloud blog averages about five new posts daily. Some honorable mentions are ‘new records of cloud spending being set in 2020′ and ’10 key performance indicators for capturing API business value’.

Lyft Team at re:invent

This is more of a video where we can see Lyft as a global icon for agile and DevOps prowess. In this video, we can see how Lyft’s engineering team mastered cloud cost Optimisation in last year’s AWS Re: invent. It is astonishing how great the team broke down their AWS bill into the smallest possible unit cost, that is, cost by a ride. Most companies do not have a team of engineers dedicated to the cost of cloud-like Lyft. It is exciting to read about how it is done when one has the resources.

Day two cloud

It is a podcast for Packet Pusher’s podcasts for cloud developers, and their show Day Two Cloud is focusing on dealing with common problems that come along while one adopts a cloud environment. Topics such as ‘the path to Cloud Certification’ and ‘building a cloud strategy for IT operations’ have been discussed, with new episodes being released every week. It is a show which started in 2019; hence the weekly content is still readily available on the internet with relatively new relevant and fresh content. Some of the honorable mentions are ‘optimizing the cloud for cost and performance’ and ‘design tips for cloud networking success.’

The new business of AI (and how its is different from traditional software)

It is a piece of article from the Andreessen Horowitz team that discusses how expanding businesses of artificial intelligence are changing technological companies’ business models. This article covers the challenges that arise with their systems and the hidden costs that come with AI systems. One such honorable mention is ‘that cloud infrastructure is a substantial and sometimes hidden cost for AI companies.

AWS Cloud Enterprise Strategy

This is a renowned blog that shows balancing the AWS strategy with the rest of one’s business. It presents new challenges, for it is perfect for those who work with cloud systems in the business context. This site features articles that head specifically towards CIOs that form a cloud strategy and pieces focusing on high-level IT management concerns like ‘How to create a data-driven culture.’

Spotting a million dollars in your AWS account

This is an article on the blogging platform of Segment, which is a Big data firm. It makes customer data accessible to all companies. The company covers a vast area of engineering and DevOps topics, including some great pieces on AWS cloud architecture. This article discusses mainly unstructured AWS bills grouped by product areas, tagging one’s existing infrastructure, and combining data across various accounts.

Conclusion

We can conclude that cost optimization in cloud environments is essential for cost management. If not maintained properly, the overall costs for various services in a cloud environment might spiral out of control. This can be a severe loss to the organization. Therefore, companies must focus on hiring individual experts in this field to manage cloud costs and save the company from substantial financial losses. Visit Us!

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