News

Cloud Computing Costs Tip: 'Whatever You Spend on Monitoring Is Worth It'

• By David Ramel
• 09/02/2020

During a recent online summit event held by Virtualization & Cloud Review, a speaker provided a quick useful tip for attendees who use cloud computing platforms: "Whatever you spend on monitoring is worth it."

That tip came from Howard M. Cohen, a 35-year IT channel executive, industry writer and frequent presenter, during the recent "Virtualization and Cloud Cost Considerations Heading into 2021" event. He is also a Sr. Resultant at The TechChannel Partners' Results Group.

Here's how Cohen explained his reasoning:

One thing you can be assured of is that when you get a bill from a provider -- be it a carrier for your communications connections, or be it a cloud provider with a subscription -- you can be guaranteed that whatever report they give you of the performance of their service will identically match the invoice they send you.

Both will have identically the same information. It's amazing isn't it? And obviously, they're well served to be consistent in their reporting to you. They may, however, not be accurate. And so you need to keep them honest. When you're signing up for a service-level agreement, a quality of service (QoS), you want to make sure you get it.

And if you don't get it, you want to make sure you get penalty payments, or rate relief or something -- some compensation. So when you monitor the performance of systems, you're also making sure you get what you pay for. The same is true whether you're running your own virtualized servers and connecting them to the internet, or through long lines or SD-WAN.

Every cloud service is a consumable, and you need to make sure that the only thing you're paying for is what you've consumed. So, every penny you spend on monitoring is absolutely worthwhile because you're keeping your providers honest.

Further speaking to the importance of monitoring, Cohen shared some statistics from a recent survey:

• 64 percent of IT managers believe detailed tracking and analysis of virtualization costs will be important this year
• 20 percent say it will be critical
• 48 percent say they report the cost/benefit of cloud or virtualization projects as a single lump sum -- the cost
• 25 percent track the cost, but say their numbers aren't accurate enough to use for budgeting or audits
• 20 percent don't report cloud or virtualization spending as separate items
• 10 percent don't track the costs at all

Cohen's presentation on cloud computing costs was one segment of a three-part online summit hosted by Virtualization & Cloud Review on Aug. 28. You can freely view the third part of the presentation, "Modernizing Your Virtualized Environment," by going here. The full summit will be available on-demand soon.

You can also see upcoming free online events presented by Virtualization & Cloud Review by going here.