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SAVE ON CLOUD COSTS? TRY THESE 5 FINOPS QUICK WINS
- Cloud and Devops
Cloud costs often accumulate unnoticed. FinOps quick wins are relatively simple measures that allow you to cut cloud costs significantly and immediately, without compromising performance or productivity. Want to get started with FinOps yourself? Try these five quick wins first.
1. SWITCH OFF UNUSED CLOUD ENVIRONMENTS
Traditional test, acceptance, and development environments are always running. The risk of restart issues is greater than the cost of running the machines. This does not apply to cloud environments. It is pure waste to consume computing power at night, on weekends, and during holidays if it is not being used.
Cloud environments can be temporarily switched off without any issues. When restarted, the images are restored to the exact point where they were stopped – as if the virtual resources were never offline. By shutting down unused cloud environments, savings of 60 to 70% can be achieved. Therefore, map out what your organisation uses and ensure that environments not needed 24/7 are set to start and stop automatically.
2. CLEAN UP ‘ORPHANED RESOURCES’
Identifying and removing orphaned resources is one of the fastest ways to reduce waste. These are components of a cloud project that remain active without being noticed after the project itself ends.
Shutting down unused virtual machines, storage disks, snapshots, load balancers, or network components delivers immediate savings without affecting system continuity. Regularly create an overview of all active resources, identify those no longer in use, and remove them. With policies and tagging, this process can be largely automated.
3. RIGHT-SIZE INFRASTRUCTURE
Right-sizing aligns infrastructure capacity with actual usage. It counterbalances the tendency of engineers to set up working environments as generously as possible. Systems often run more smoothly with extra capacity for virtual machines, databases, and storage, but it leads to structurally excessive cloud expenditures.
Make right-sizing a periodic process. Analyse monthly usage data and peak loads to ensure resources still match current needs. Scale services up or down where necessary. Use built-in recommendations from cloud platforms or FinOps tools to do this. That way, you can achieve savings without forcing engineering teams to compromise on performance.
4. REMOVE UNUSED LICENSES
Efficient license management saves money immediately without affecting productivity. When additional roles arise within a team, new employees start, or temporary solutions are needed, a cloud licence is quickly added. But these licences are often forgotten when they’re no longer needed. As a result, many organisations pay for automatically renewed software licences that are barely used, or not used at all.
Regularly check licence usage and link it to login or activity data. Also set clear policies: only assign licences when they’re demonstrably needed and schedule regular reviews to remove or downgrade unused accounts. Automate this process with identity or licence management tools to structurally prevent waste.
5. MONITOR DATA TRAFFIC AND NETWORK USAGE
Data traffic and network usage are difficult to monitor through standard dashboards. Monthly costs for NAT gateways, interregional data transfers, and traffic via expensive routes can quickly rise unnoticed.
By actively monitoring and analysing network usage, you can uncover these hidden cost drivers. Set clear alerts and link costs back to responsible teams. With insights from cloud portals or FinOps tools, you can make informed decisions and avoid unnecessary network expenses.
KEEP CLOUD COSTS UNDER CONTROL
Thanks to Paco Bernabé and Rense Siegmund from FinOps Academy. They presented these 5 quick wins to help keep cloud costs manageable at a FinOps Event organised by Tergos.
Does your organisation want to do more with FinOps? Are you looking for a new challenge in this field, or would you like to connect with our experts? Take a look here: