Cost Management Strategies for Cloud Migration

How I Cut Cloud Costs by $300K+ Annually: 3 Real FinOps Wins When leadership asked me to “figure out why our cloud bill keeps growing Here’s how I turned cost chaos into controlled savings: Case #1: The $45K Monthly Reality Check The Problem: Inherited a runaway AWS environment - $45K/month with zero oversight My Approach: ✅ 30-day CloudWatch deep dive revealed 40% of instances at <20% utilization ✅ Right-sized over-provisioned resources ✅ Implemented auto-scaling for variable workloads ✅ Strategic Reserved Instance purchases for predictable loads ✅ Automated dev/test environment scheduling (nights/weekends off) Impact: 35% cost reduction = $16K monthly savings Case #2: Multi-Cloud Mayhem The Problem: AWS + Azure teams spending independently = duplicate everything My Strategy: ✅ Unified cost allocation tagging across both platforms ✅ Centralized dashboards showing spend by department/project ✅ Monthly stakeholder cost reviews ✅ Eliminated duplicate services (why run 2 databases for 1 app?) ✅ Negotiated enterprise discounts through consolidated commitments Impact: 28% overall reduction while improving DR capabilities Case 3: Storage Spiral Control The Problem: 20% quarterly storage growth, 60% of data untouched for 90+ days in expensive hot storage My Solution: 1, Comprehensive data lifecycle analysis 2, Automated tiering policies (hot → warm → cold → archive) 3, Business-aligned data retention policies 4, CloudFront optimization for frequent access 5, Geographic workload repositioning 6, Monthly department storage reporting for accountability Impact: $8K monthly storage savings + 45% bandwidth cost reduction ----- The Meta-Lesson: Total Annual Savings: $300K+ The real win wasn’t just the money - it was building a cost-conscious culture** where: - Teams understand their cloud spend impact - Automated policies prevent cost drift - Business stakeholders make informed decisions - Performance actually improved through better resource allocation My Go-To FinOps Stack: - Monitoring: CloudWatch, Azure Monitor - Optimization: AWS Cost Explorer, Trusted Advisor - Automation: Lambda functions for policy enforcement - Reporting: Custom dashboards + monthly business reviews - Culture: Showback reports that make costs visible The biggest insight? Most “cloud cost problems” are actually visibility and accountability problems in disguise. What’s your biggest cloud cost challenge right now? Drop it in the comments - happy to share specific strategies! 👇 FinOps #CloudCosts #AWS #Azure #CostOptimization #DevOps #CloudEngineering P.S. : If your monthly cloud bill makes you nervous, you’re not alone. These strategies work at any scale.

In my last year at AWS, I was once tasked with finding $400 million in cost savings for cloud spending in just one year. It was a daunting challenge, but I learned a lot of valuable lessons along the way that I'd like to share with you. First, let's go over what I did to save that $400 million. Here are the top three strategies that worked for me: - Automation of idle instances: It's common for developers and testers to leave instances running even when they're not being used, which can add up quickly. We built automation to identify idle instances, tagged them, sent emails to people, and shut them down automatically if we didn’t get a response to leave them up. - Elimination of unused backups and storage: We found that we were keeping backups of customer data that we weren't using, which was costing us a lot of money. By reaching out to customers and getting their approval to delete backups that weren't being used, we were able to save a substantial amount of money. - Reserved instances: Reserved instances have a much lower cost than on-demand instances, so we made sure to buy them whenever possible. We also used convertible RIs so that we could shift between instance types if there were mispredictions about which types of instances would be in demand. Now, let's talk about what I would do differently if I were facing this challenge today. Here are two key strategies that I'd focus on: - Start with automation: As I mentioned earlier, automating the identification and shutdown of idle instances is crucial for cost savings. I'd make sure to start with this strategy right away, as it's one of the easiest and most effective ways to save money. - Be cautious with reserved instances: While RIs can be a great way to save money, they're not always the right choice. If you're in a world where you might be shrinking, not growing, you need to be much more cautious about buying RIs. Make sure to consider your commitment to buy and whether you'll be able to sell the capacity later. What would you add to this list? #devops #cloud #automation

The #1 problem I see in cloud cost management? Nobody knows who’s spending what. Finance sees a giant bill. Engineering sees… nothing. This gap leads to: - Unused resources running 24/7 - Teams with no idea what they’re spending - Anomalies caught too late If you want to control costs, start here: 1. Require proper tagging (and enforce it) 2. Show teams their slice of the bill 3. Align costs to products, teams, environments Visibility isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation of accountability. You can’t fix what you can’t see.