As concerns about cloud inefficiencies continue to rise, Russ Ernst of Blancco shares three strategies that can help companies decrease cloud spend, minimize cybersecurity vulnerabilities and reduce their carbon footprint.
As the move from on-premise computing to the cloud continues to accelerate, so do concerns over “cloudflation,†or the rising cost of storing terabytes of data in the cloud. Managing cloud spend was the main concern of both enterprises and SMBs in Flexera’sOpens a new window 2023 State of the Cloud Report. Most respondents (82%) said that managing cloud costs was the top challenge, followed by security (79%). Flexera’s report also noted that public cloud spending was over budget by an average of 18%, up from 13% in 2022. With businesses facing rising costs on everything from labor to office space, the rising cost of the cloud could have detrimental effects on the bottom line.
Digital transformation and the migration to the cloud has been a top IT trend for years, and then came a global pandemic that highlighted the need to make information widely accessible (in a secure manner) to a remote workforce at scale. While many employers are changing their minds about the benefits of remote work, cloud migration continues to pick up steam. This backs up findings from our recent research reportOpens a new window , which found that 51% of the 1,800 IT professionals working in financial services and healthcare surveyed now host all data in the cloud.Â
However, the inefficient use of the cloud is a real concern for business executives according to a reportOpens a new window from Anodot: 54% of respondents said the biggest cause of cloud waste is a lack of insight into cloud usage, and 37% said they were “taken aback†by cloud charges. As the cost of everything continues to climb, companies are trying to balance turning a profit and the rising cost of doing business, which includes IT spend.
The Evolving Role of Data Management
As concerns about cloud inefficiencies continue to rise, there are three strategies companies can employ to decrease what they’re spending on cloud storage while minimizing cybersecurity vulnerabilities and reducing their carbon footprint:
- Employing data storage best practices: Probably for the same reason we keep every tax return from the past two decades, enterprises have a “keep every document and piece of data†mindset because it may have some unknown intrinsic value in the years to come. This bad habit may have its roots in the big data era when data was the “new oil,†and storing it meant it could, at some point, be analyzed for insights and then used to make strategic decisions. In addition to the “keep it all†mindset, regular backups and data archives also add to the complexity of the data ecosystem. In a perfect world, once data is analyzed, businesses should determine which data is important. They must be kept for compliance and legal and/or tax purposes. At this point, the no-longer-needed data should be disposed of with an audit trail and report to prove the data is erased – permanently.
See More: Data Storage, Backup & Recovery Learn Track
- Create and enforce end-of-life data policies: Another way to eliminate the hoarding habit is to have a deeper understanding of the data being collected before it’s stashed in the cloud. By establishing a true data lifecycle management policy, CIOs can determine the best course of action on how to handle redundant, obsolete, and trivial (ROT) data, as well as other data deemed unnecessary at the end of its useful life. The policy also serves another purpose: to help better manage cloud spend and reduce the company’s attack surface. The more data you have, the larger the attack surface to monitor and the more points of vulnerability. After identifying what’s being stored and developing a risk-focused data lifecycle policy, companies must enforce these policies and put in the work to classify the data, gleaning insights (as mentioned previously), then adding metadata tags to specific types of data. Once this process is complete, IT teams must take the next step of performing data sanitization to eradicate ROT data. Taking this approach will foster improved cyber hygiene and provide a far more sustainable approach to data management, which brings us to one very important advantage of optimized data management – meeting sustainability goals.Â
- Data management as a sustainability strategy: Many companies here and abroad may not consider the cloud a threat to the environment, but it is. In Ireland, some estimates claim that by 2030, 30% of the country’s entire energy consumption will be from data centers. The U.S. may pose the biggest environmental threat as it has the most data centersOpens a new window  in the world (2,670 facilities). The problem is that most data centers (especially those in balmy climates) rely on artificial air-cooling systems that require cold water piped through server racks – using up vital water sources, which are very limited in California, Arizona and other parts of the U.S. Some data centers use air cooling, which is accomplished using huge air fans and consumes immense amounts of electricity. An MIT reportOpens a new window found that operating one data center is equal to the electricity it takes to run 50,000 homes. Bottom line: the cloud’s carbon footprint is huge. Every company has an opportunity to decrease its impact on the environment by developing and executing data management strategies that decrease the amount of ROT data and end-of-life data being stored in the cloud.
See More: The Top Sustainability Initiatives In the IT Industry
The days of a “create, store, and forget†mantra are long gone. The rising cost of cloud storage and the need to reign in IT costs require companies to develop sound data management strategies that focus on understanding the entire data lifecycle and being more aware of what’s being stored and why.Â
Not only will companies save money, but they’ll also increase their security defenses and contribute to reducing the cloud’s carbon footprint at a critical juncture in the global push to reach net zero.
What data lifecycle challenges do you face, and how are you tackling them? Share with us on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!
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