Why the Key to Cloud Optimisation is Hidden in Your Apps

How would you approach optimising your cloud spend? 

For most organisations, the answer is simple: rightsizing.

A feature of the transition to cloud architecture has been that many businesses have gone overboard when provisioning for capacity. For example, using an extra-large AWS EC2 instance when a medium-sized instance would meet demand. As I discussed in an earlier post, the root of this problem is simply that many organisations misunderstand the importance of accurate planning for peaks and troughs in demand.

So, it makes complete sense that your first step in optimising your cloud costs should be to scale back on all the capacity you don’t need. There are plenty of tools available to help businesses identify where they’re overspending – such as AWS Cloudability and Cloudyn – making it a relatively simple task, provided you carry out up and downstream risk assessments. 

And it will likely be effective, at least in part. 

But here’s the kicker. In our experience, the real cloud cost-savings are to be found in engineering your applications for cost-efficiency. In fact, we’ve found that building efficiency into apps can deliver up to four times the savings typically gained from rightsizing. 

This poses two obvious questions. Firstly, why? And secondly, if that’s the case then why are companies not writing efficiency into apps from the off?

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