Around the world, everyone has felt the economic turbulence over the past few years. High inflation and looming recessions are enough to give anyone sleepless nights. Many organisations use a variety of cloud computing platforms to run their operations, and with rising cost, it can be tricky to manage spending. According to a report by Anodot, 49% of businesses find it hard to keep cloud costs under control. Organisations are looking at ways to reduce cloud expenditure while still maintaining return on investment.
In this post, we will be sharing three key tips on how businesses can reduce their cloud costs, demystifying the AWS Rapid Ramp credit programme and the criteria needed to qualify for this program.
3 ways to reduce your cloud costs
- Right-sizing resources
The number one way organisations can optimise their cloud resources is by ensuring that they are using the right amount of compute, storage, and networking resources for their needs. This involves monitoring resource usage, identifying idle or underutilised resources, and adjusting accordingly.
Learn more about how you can get on top of cloud cost wastage – FITTS
- Automated cost management
Leveraging tools and services provided by cloud providers, as well as third-party cost management solutions, organisations can automate the monitoring and optimisation of their cloud costs. This includes setting up alerts and budgets, analysing usage patterns, and implementing policies to control spending.
- Reserved instances or savings plans
Cloud providers will often offer options to purchase reserved instances or savings plans, which can provide significant cost savings for long-term usage. These options allow organisations to commit to using specific instance types or services for a period of time, in exchange for a discounted rate.
What is the AWS Rapid Ramp Credit programme?
In short, AWS offers £300 worth of credit to be used to test AWS services for small and medium businesses. These credits are valid for 6 months. This offer is perfect for businesses that are looking to drive innovation and improve the efficacy of their AWS cloud infrastructure but face budget constraints. These credits are valid on any AWS service. As a leading public cloud provider, AWS offers a wide range of services and features for hosting applications, storage, and infrastructure. When considering AWS as your cloud vendor, there are several advantages:
Global Infrastructure
AWS has a vast global infrastructure with data centres located in multiple regions worldwide, allowing you to deploy your applications closer to your users and improve performance.
Extensive Service Portfolio
AWS offers a comprehensive set of services, including compute, storage, databases, analytics, machine learning, networking, and more. This wide range of services allows you to build highly scalable and robust architectures’.
Elasticity and Scalability
AWS provides auto-scaling capabilities, enabling your applications to automatically adjust resources based on demand. This ensures optimal performance and cost-efficiency.
Flexibility and Customisation
AWS offers a broad range of instance types, storage options, and deployment models, allowing you to tailor your infrastructure to meet specific requirements.
Cost-Effective Pricing Models
AWS offers flexible pricing options, including on-demand, reserved instances, and spot instances, which can help optimise costs based on usage patterns and requirements.
For example, Zalora is an Asian fashion and lifestyle ecommerce retailer with 59 million monthly site visits. By migrating its CDN to AWS, Zalora reduced its costs by 49 percent and lowered response times by up to 46 percent to serve its customers faster. The company now saves thousands of dollars each month on data transfer expenses, because Amazon CloudFront does not impose charges for data transfer out from AWS origins.
Strong Community and Ecosystem
AWS has a large and active community of developers, architects, and partners, providing resources, documentation, and support to help you get started and solve problems.
How can I qualify for ARRC?
The ARRC is a program specifically geared towards SMBs. It allows businesses to test any AWS service with minimum risk. To qualify for your £300 credit, you must have:
- A valid AWS account with up-to-date billing information (reseller accounts do not qualify)
- Not previously received more than £300 of AWS promotional credit
- A sufficient business case and proof of concept to test using the credits
- No linked accounts
To learn more about AWS promotional credits, visit their terms & conditions page.
Register with us today to discuss your business case and check your eligibility to gain £300 in credit for any AWS services.
Want to discuss other cloud possibilities? Talk to us today about your cloud infrastructure. Our cloud services range from Azure and AWS public clouds to our own VMware-certified VPC, spread across multiple datacenters on our low –latency core network. We are approved by the National Cyber Security Centre and CAS(T) accredited. Our cloud environments are ISO 27001,27017,27018 certified, keeping all your data encrypted, secure, and in a UK safe harbour.
