[Countermeasures against weak yen] How to cut costs on cloud usage fees

This is Ohara from the China office.

Cloud services are an indispensable infrastructure for many companies, but due to recent price increases due to the weak yen and rising prices in Japan, I think many companies want to review their monthly cloud usage fees. In particular, most payments for cloud services provided by foreign companies are made in USD (US dollars), so they are greatly affected by exchange rates.

In this article, we will focus on the "cost cutting" part and introduce ways to reduce and save money on monthly cloud usage fees.

*Information as of May 2024.

① Optimization of cloud resources

Delete unnecessary cloud resources

If you use cloud services for a long time, unnecessary resources may accumulate. By regularly reviewing these and deleting virtual servers, storage, network resources, etc. that are no longer in use, you can reduce unnecessary costs.

Also, depending on the cloud provider, there are tools that automatically monitor the usage status of cloud resources, so it is important to continuously monitor cloud resources and find points for reducing and optimizing unnecessary resources. .

Resource optimization and automation

One of the strengths of the cloud is the ability to increase or decrease resources as needed. You can avoid overusing resources by monitoring resource usage and configuring autoscaling and serverless architectures that increase resources during peak periods and decrease them during off-seasons.

For example, with AWS, you can use the Auto Scaling feature or leverage serverless architectures such as AWS Lambda to use resources only when needed.

② Review of subscription plan

Utilizing reserved instances

Some cloud service providers offer discounts through long-term contracts called Reserved Instances.

However, depending on the cloud provider's service specifications, there may be restrictions such as not being able to pay for the required resources in advance or changing the instance specifications midway through, but if the resource is to be used for a long time or is used frequently, then , consider implementing Reserved Instances.

Utilizing spot instances

Again, depending on the cloud service provider, there is an option called spot instances, where the cloud provider provides unused resources at a low price.

For temporary or background tasks, you can reduce costs by leveraging Spot Instances.

③ Comparison of infrastructure services

Use different cloud providers

Overseas cloud providers such as AWS have the top share in the world and in Japan, but if you don't have any particular preferences, one way is to use other cloud providers or use other cloud services together. .

For example, if you use Oracle Cloud, a cloud provider made overseas, you can reduce costs because the original service unit price is low, and if you use Cloudflare for the CDN (Contents Delivery Network) part, you can reduce the amount of data transferred. There are no pay-per-use charges. (Excluding Enterprise plans)

Additionally, with Japanese cloud providers such as Sakura Internet, the service is not affected by the USD exchange rate, and there is no pay-as-you-go data transfer fee (except for some services such as CDN), so you have to pay monthly. It also makes it easier to understand your cost budget.

Use on-premises infrastructure environment

Depending on the use and purpose of the system or application, you can use an on-premises (physical server) environment, or, although this is an extreme method, you can migrate from the cloud to an on-premises infrastructure environment.

With on-premises, you manage your infrastructure environment at your own facilities or in a data center designated by your company, so you can control infrastructure costs without relying on cloud provider service fees.

Of course, it is necessary to anticipate in advance the initial investments such as purchasing the first hardware and installing network lines, as well as the periodic maintenance and renewal costs of the hardware, but in the long run, there are certain costs. Since there are many cases where it can be operated based on expenses, it becomes easier to create a cost budget plan.

However, using an on-premises infrastructure environment or moving to on-premises requires careful consideration, as it depends on the needs and objectives of each company or organization.

● Please tell me the comparison and differences between a cloud server and on-premises (physical server)
https://beyondjapan.com/pt-faq/server-comparison

④ Strengthen internal cost awareness

Cost awareness and training

In order to reduce the cost of cloud services, it is important that all members of the company become cost conscious. It is important to promote a change in mindset towards cost reduction and reduce the use of unnecessary resources.

In addition, in order to effectively use cloud services, appropriate training for members is also required. By learning how to use cloud services efficiently and best practices for reducing costs, you can expect to reduce your cloud usage fees.

Reduce invisible costs

The best way to reduce the cost of cloud services is to use only your own internal resources, but depending on the circumstances of your company or organization, it may not be possible to reduce the cost of your own internal resources.

For example, ``I'm focusing on my core business, so I can't take care of tasks in this field,'' or ``We don't have any engineers who can handle cloud services or infrastructure, or our internal members don't have enough technical skills.'' The situation may be considered. In this situation, if you try to cover it with your own in-house resources, it will take extra internal man-hours and effort, and there is a possibility that "invisible costs" will increase, and in the worst case scenario, "you will fail in the cloud settings," You may run into problems such as the system not working.

If this is the case, consider outsourcing the advice and operation of your company's cloud and infrastructure environment to an MSP (managed service provider).

MSP is a company that provides system construction, operation, maintenance, and monitoring from a professional perspective for companies and organizations' IT infrastructure (servers, networks, databases, etc.) and applications. In addition to providing continuous technical support such as system updates, security management, data backup, and recovery in case of system failure, there are also MSPs that provide consulting services with cloud technology and knowledge.

Please note that support systems, scope, specialties, and fee structures vary depending on the MSP vendor, so we recommend selecting an MSP vendor that matches your company.

summary

Above, we introduced ways to cut costs on cloud usage fees.

Cost reduction is one of the challenges for companies and organizations. It is important to have these options available at all times, use them depending on the situation, and make decisions.

multi-cloud support and partnerships with various cloud providers

WebSpeed provided by Beyond as an in-house service also has a fixed monthly cloud usage fee. Please also consider these services.