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As COVID almost starts to feel like a distant memory, you think wed all cop a break. But no, the threat of recession now darkens the horizons. This makes it an excellent time to get smart about how you use cloud and ensure it delivers short- and long-term value to your organisation.

In this article, we suggest three specific ways to nail down some genuine savings or optimise the benefits (and savings) from your cloud and cloud applications.

1. Save more when you choose a cloud-native application

Depending on where you are on your roadmap to cloud adoption, you may want to look sideways at some of your legacy line-of-business applications and ask if they will serve you equally well in your transformed state.

If you have enough budget, practically any application can be retrospectively modernised to work in the cloud. And, unwilling to be left behind, some vendors have re-engineered their applications to run in the cloud with varying degrees of success. But its important to realise that unless the application was specifically built from the ground up to run on the cloud (i.e., a cloud-native), it may not deliver an ROI or enable your business to keep up with the current pace of change.

Think of it this way: Its like adapting your petrol-fuelled car to run on an EV battery. While innovation may prolong your beloved vehicle's life, it will never perform to the standard of a brand spanking new state-of-the-art Tesla.

Cloud-native applications are built from birth to be inherently efficient; to perform to a much better standard than applications with non-native features, and to cost less to run.

Lets break those benefits down a bit:

2. Check out that cloud sprawl

Its easy to rack up spikes on your cloud invoice when your organisation has gone cloud crazy. Cloud crawl is when your cloud resources have proliferated out of control, and you are paying for them, often unknowingly.

So, how does that happen? It usually comes about because of a failure to eliminate services that are no longer, or never were, part of your overall cloud strategy. Its like still paying a vehicle insurance policy on a Ferrari when youve made a sensible downgrade to a family-friendly Toyota.

Cloud sprawl can come around through departments adding on or trialling cloud applications, then not unsubscribing from them. Or from maintaining unneeded storage despite deleting the associated cloud server instance. Or from services you once needed when making the original move to the cloud and not decommissioning them.

Make your cloud strategy a living document to ensure youre only paying for what you need and use. One thats shared and compared with the real-life status quo regularly. Implement policies to control those random or one-off cloud application trials when theyre done with. Talk to your technology partner about setting up automated provisioning to shut down old workloads that are no longer of value or could be managed off-peak and, therefore more cost-effectively.

And compare every invoice to identify if you are paying for cloud services that you no longer need or use. If its all sounding a bit hard, a cloud crawl health check by your managed services partner could provide a great ROI.

3. Get more value from your no-where-near dead legacy applications

While cloud-native applications may seem to offer it all, we all know that sometimes its simply not practical to move on from your investment in a legacy solution. In that case, a lift and shift (think of it as uplifting your house as is, where is - from a slightly down-at-heel suburb to a more upmarket one with better facilities) may be the best option to breathe life into ageing technology without having to invest in renovations (or buy new servers).

When done well, lift and shift is a very cost-effective way to onramp your organisation onto the cloud. Just be aware that while you will save money by not modernising your application, youll not realise the true cloud benefits from native constructs (i.e., cheaper storage, elasticity, or additional security).

Dont forget to count your savings

If youre wondering where else you can make immediate or long-term savings, dont forget that your original decision to move to the cloud has delivered your organisation a positive ROI since Day One.

And if youve chosen fully managed services, youve saved even more.

Youve already walked away from the significant overheads of expensive servers stacked in a dust-free, temperature-controlled environment, the disruption caused by software upgrades or server downtime, and the need for IT resources to manage your environment and safeguard your data from cyberattacks. And youve said hello to a low-risk, secure, highly available environment from anywhere your people work, at any time.

If youd like to discuss how to optimise your cloud benefits, and get some well-considered, practical answers, contact us here.

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3 practical ways to fight recession by being cloud smart - IT Brief New Zealand