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  • Writer's pictureRizwan Khan

Top tips for keeping your public cloud cost in check.

Updated: Nov 25, 2022

Over the years, the public cloud has given a way to curb data center expenditures for organizations of all sizes. While the pay-as-you-go model of cloud computing brings significant opportunities for savings, it also requires an innovative approach to minimize waste and optimize spending. Without advanced planning, these anticipated cost savings can become a considerable expense for any firm if left unchecked.


Following are a few tips for a CEO to be aware of when reviewing an organization’s public cloud budget with their tech leadership:

  1. Ensure clear business outcomes and KPIs are defined by the tech leadership using value-to-spend analysis.

  2. Make sure your CTO has presented you with a clear public cloud strategy based on workload dependencies rather than focusing solely on usage and capacity patterns.

  3. The cost of services that best meet the organization’s needs and budget is calculated using the cost calculator offered by the public cloud provider. 

  4. Ensure the tech team has the expertise to develop applications specifically for the cloud. Leveraging cloud-native services and optimization initiatives can quickly achieve desired efficiencies.

  5. Services should be provisioned using auto-scaling services. Auto-scaling can automatically adjust capacity to maintain steady, predictable performance at the lowest possible cost. 

  6. Prepaid discounts for reserved instances should be included in the budget. This option provides considerable savings, mainly if capacity is known or can be accurately predicted.

  7. There should not be any cost for unused instances.

The controls mentioned above, and efficiencies can be handled by the internal tech team or a managed services provider who can help optimize and manage the cloud spending and efficiently provision your cloud resources.


The ideas mentioned above are meant as information to ease your organizational processes. However, if you would like a more detailed overview, do not hesitate to reach out to me at rizwan.khan@mac.com.


I have years of experience building Technology and providing Technology Due Diligence as a CTO, and I am available for fruitful discussions.

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