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What are Cloud Optimization Services?

DevOps

Aug 15, 2023

Migrating to the cloud is a great start for organizations that want to upgrade IT performance and minimize infrastructure management. However, moving to the cloud and adopting cloud-native services is only the beginning. IT teams have to continually optimize and finetune cloud environments to align with the needs of the business. Yes, the cloud enables automation in many ways, but organizations still have to direct that automation appropriately.

The problem is that in order to optimize, IT decision-makers need visibility into what’s happening within their cloud environments. And depending on the size and nature of the organization, cloud environments can be complex. Keeping track of infrastructure health, as well as external outcomes is hard without the right set of tools or expertise.

That’s why cloud optimization services have grown increasingly popular. The typical goal of cloud optimization services is to keep IT resources aligned with performance requirements. Cloud optimization services can cover many aspects of cloud operations, including:

  • Expenditures
  • Architecture
  • Databases
  • Security
  • Compliance
  • Storage

Optimization in each area can also mean different things to different organizations. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to optimizing cloud deployments. The right answer depends on many factors and the unique needs of the business. But the benefits of optimizing are far-reaching – lower costs, increased transparency, higher efficiency, and less operational risk.

Fortunately, on AWS, discovering what needs optimizing and following through on those optimizations is easy. AWS offers a multitude of services that cover the areas highlighted above and more. In the next section, we’ll highlight some of the most popular AWS cloud optimization services today.

A Summary of AWS Optimization Services

AWS recognizes that even though it is responsible for maintaining the health and security of physical IT infrastructure, there is still a lot to manage on the software side. And AWS gives users so much power, that it’s easy to lose sight of what the business needs. Organizations are always changing, which means cloud deployments should as well.

That’s why Amazon CloudWatch is a great first step for any enterprise on the AWS cloud. Amazon CloudWatch automatically collects data from other cloud resources and applications, providing detailed visibility into cloud operations. The data that CloudWatch collects allows IT teams to set up application monitoring and enables nuanced resource optimization. CloudWatch can also automatically trigger actions to help maintain optimal performance.

AWS Trusted Advisor is another important tool that alerts teams to potential improvements across cloud environments. It will analyze cloud environments and then make recommendations according to the latest best practices. The areas that AWS Trusted Advisor covers include security, performance, fault tolerance, cost, and service quotas.

AWS Cost Explorer is the perfect solution for managing costs and assessing utilization over time. This tool gives users rich detail into cost drivers, utilization trends, and expense anomalies, both at the account level and with more granularity. AWS Cost Explorer is also useful for forecasting future spending based on past results.

One of AWS’ most popular services, Amazon S3, comes with dedicated tools to optimize object storage deployments. For example, users can take advantage of Amazon S3 Analytics to evaluate storage class utilization and access patterns. With this data, solutions architects can make better decisions about how to store resources and when to move to lower-cost classes.

Tagging

Finally, AWS allows companies to add tags to many resources, which is useful when analyzing performance. Tags give users the ability to label specific resources with useful information, like what department it’s tied to, who the responsible party is, what application it supports, etc. With tags, understanding performance and costs by resource is easier, empowering engineers to make smart choices when updating configurations.

These services only scratch the surface of what AWS provides in terms of optimization solutions. It can be overwhelming to figure out what tools to use and how to implement recommended optimizations. That’s why working with an AWS expert, like ClearScale, can be helpful when it comes to optimizing cloud operations.

What Cloud Optimization Services Does ClearScale Provide?

ClearScale is an AWS Premier Tier Services partner that has been helping organizations optimize IT operations on AWS since 2011. Our engineers and solutions architects have earned 100+ AWS technical certifications and 11 AWS competencies. We know what challenges organizations face when operating on the cloud, and we understand how to design cloud architectures that maximize performance while minimizing cost and administrative burden.

We offer a number of dedicated cloud optimization services for companies that need to improve cloud outcomes. For example, we:

We also keep optimization in mind more generally in every cloud project we execute. Whether you are migrating legacy databases, setting up big data architecture, deploying new AI/ML models, or tackling some other need, we can help you make sure you build your cloud ecosystem right the first time.

Get in touch today to speak with a cloud expert and discuss how we can help:

Call us at 1-800-591-0442
Send us an email at sales@clearscale.com
Fill out a Contact Form
Read our Customer Case Studies

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