The cloud has become an integral part of the rapid transformation of corporate IT. But what’s behind the costs? Alexander Flach, cloud solutions expert at MVI SOLVE-IT, gives us insights into the world of cost transparency in the cloud and why this is of the utmost importance for our software development.
Today, it is particularly important for IT decision-makers not to lose sight of the project budget. In fact, practice shows that almost all IT systems are migrated to the cloud or new developments are implemented in a cloud infrastructure straight away. In order to remain competitive, companies are dependent on the new services offered by the major cloud providers. There are many reasons for this, from performance to the possibilities in the area of big data and artificial intelligence. The latest technologies and services are suddenly available at the touch of a button thanks to the cloud, which were previously not easy to use.
Even if this means that companies no longer need to operate huge data centres, costs in the cloud are a challenge as they differ significantly from traditional on-premise models. “As software developers today, we need to understand the costs of cloud services in order to fulfil our customers’ expectations and provide effective advice,” explains Alexander Flach, Head of Business Unit Cloud at MVI SOLVE-IT.
Software developers’ knowledge of the cloud
Cloud providers such as Amazon (AWS) and Microsoft (Azure) offer a wide range of services with different pricing models. In order to design a cost-effective architecture and include cloud solutions as a decisive factor in finding a solution, knowledge of pricing models is essential. “These cloud requirements make today’s IT projects more complex because they represent an additional component in the system implementation.”
Faktoren zur Kalkulation von Cloudkosten
Die Kalkulation der Cloud-Kosten berücksichtigt eine Vielzahl von Faktoren, darunter Service-Laufzeiten, Kapazität, Speicherplatz, Anfragen im System, Datentransfer und Pauschalgebühren. Alexander Flach fügt noch hinzu: Mehr Traffic im System bedeutet höhere Kosten, da die Cloud zusätzliche Ressourcen benötigt, um den Betrieb aufrechtzuerhalten.
Ein Beispiel aus der Praxis für eine Cloud-Optimierung im Kundenprojekt: „Das vorliegende Kundensystem hat nur interne Anwender, die mit dem System während der Business-Zeiten arbeiten und es wird nachts und am Wochenende nicht genutzt. Daraufhin haben wir eine Automatisierung eingebaut, die das System in diesen Zeiten ausschaltet, sowie große Teile der Infrastruktur abbaut und morgens vor Betriebsbeginn wieder aufbaut. Da die Cloud-Infrastruktur abgebaut wurde, entstehen in dieser Zeit nun keine Cloudkosten für den Kunden mehr.“ Damit konnte MVI SOLVE-IT den Kunden im Thema Cloud und Kosten beraten und gleichzeitig für ihn Cloudkosten von bis zu 50% einsparen. Ein ähnliches Konzept war bei OnPremise früher schlichtweg nicht möglich.
Factors for calculating cloud costs
The calculation of cloud costs takes a variety of factors into account, including service runtimes, capacity, storage space, requests in the system, data transfer and flat-rate fees. Alexander Flach adds: “More traffic in the system means higher costs, as the cloud requires additional resources to maintain operations.
A practical example of cloud optimisation in a customer project: “This customer system only has internal users who work with the system during business hours and it is not used at night or at weekends. We then installed an automation system that switches off the system during these times, dismantles large parts of the infrastructure and rebuilds it in the morning before operations start. As the cloud infrastructure was dismantled, the customer no longer incurs any cloud costs during this time.” MVI SOLVE-IT was thus able to advise the customer on cloud and costs and at the same time save the customer up to 50% in cloud costs. A similar concept was simply not possible with on-premise in the past.
Tools for reporting, dashboards, cost estimates and alerting are already provided by the cloud providers. The DevOps employees at MVI SOLVE-IT have access to these tools, which are designed to ensure operations for the customer. Alerts can be set in order to be informed when cost thresholds are exceeded and, if necessary, to take direct action.
Challenges in practice
The challenges in practice are many and varied, from identifying cost-saving opportunities and developing the appropriate automation solutions. “There are also complex multicloud scenarios,” summarises Flach. “Customers often use different cloud platforms for the same system because they want to combine certain services. The ramified multicloud landscape makes it even more difficult to keep track of the resulting cloud costs.” But these challenges are also opportunities. “Personally, as an IT manager, I am also enthusiastic about working with cloud technologies because it expands the development tasks in the software environment.” As a developer, you generally want to work with modern, new technologies and the cloud opens up new opportunities for creative solutions and promotes agility in software development. The cloud specialist is certain that “it has never been so easy to start up entire server landscapes at the touch of a button, try something out and then shut it down again straight away – that promotes agility.”
