Did you decide to come back for more after reading 7 Effective Practices For Multi-Cloud Cost Optimization? I’m glad you did. Now, let’s dive into the world of AWS cost optimization and explore some essential strategies to help you get the most value out of your cloud investments. In this blog post, we’ll cover a range of tips and best practices, from understanding your cost drivers to leveraging AWS tools and services for maximum efficiency. We’ll also discuss the importance of laying a solid foundation, utilizing real-time data, designing effective cost allocation strategies, and embracing a proactive approach to cloud cost management.

Know Your Cost Drivers

The first step in any cost optimization journey is understanding where your money is going. AWS provides a wealth of tools and reports to help you gain visibility into costs, such as AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Cost and Usage Reports. Take the time to analyze your spending patterns and identify the key drivers of your AWS costs, such as EC2 instances, data transfer, or storage. Once you have a clear picture of cost drivers, you can start making informed decisions about where to focus optimization efforts. For example, if you notice that a particular application or workload is consuming a significant portion of your budget, you can investigate ways to optimize its resource utilization or consider alternative architectures.

Establish a Strong Foundation

Before diving into specific cost optimization techniques, it’s crucial to establish a strong foundation for your AWS environment. This means setting up your infrastructure in a way that maximizes value from your investments, improves forecasting accuracy, and continuously measures optimization efforts.

One key aspect of laying this foundation is defining clear goals and objectives for your adoption. What business outcomes are you aiming to achieve? How will you measure success? By aligning your cost optimization strategies with your overall business goals, you can ensure that your efforts are focused and impactful.

Another essential component is establishing the right processes and behaviors within your organization. Encourage a culture of cost awareness and ownership, where teams outside of IT are empowered to make informed decisions about resource consumption. Provide training and education to help everyone understand the impact of their actions on cloud costs. A rising tide lifts all boats!

AWS Networking Workshop With Keith Lafaso

Right-Size Your º£½ÇÖ±²¥

One of the most effective ways to optimize AWS costs is to ensure that you’re using the right size and type of resources for your workloads. Overprovisioning leads to unnecessary expenses, while under provisioning negatively impacts performance and availability.

Regularly review your EC2 instances and identify opportunities to right-size them based on actual usage patterns. AWS provides tools like AWS Trusted Advisor and AWS Compute Optimizer to help you identify instances that are underutilized or overprovisioned. By adjusting your instance types and sizes, you can often achieve significant cost savings without compromising performance.

Leverage AWS Pricing Models

AWS offers a variety of pricing models to help you optimize your costs based on your usage patterns and commitments. For example, if you have predictable and steady-state workloads, you can take advantage of Reserved Instances to obtain significant discounts compared to On-Demand pricing. For workloads with flexible start and end times, Spot Instances can provide substantial cost savings of up to 90% compared to On-Demand prices.

By leveraging Spot Instances for appropriate workloads and implementing best practices like diversifying instance types and handling interruptions gracefully, you can unlock significant cost optimization opportunities.

Implement Auto-Scaling

The manual management of resources can be time-consuming and error-prone, leading to inefficiencies and wasted spend. By embracing automation and scaling techniques, you can optimize your resource utilization and costs.

Implement auto-scaling for your applications to dynamically adjust the number of instances based on demand. This ensures that you have the right amount of resources available when needed, while avoiding overprovisioning during periods of low traffic. Services like AWS Auto Scaling and Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling make it easy to define scaling policies and automatically scale your resources.

Optimize Storage and Data Transfer

Storage and data transfer costs can add up quickly, especially as your data volumes grow. To optimize your storage costs, consider using the appropriate storage classes based on your data access patterns.

For example, Amazon S3 offers different storage tiers, such as S3 Standard, S3 Infrequent Access, and S3 Glacier, each with different pricing and retrieval characteristics. Implement lifecycle policies to automatically transition objects to lower-cost storage tiers when they are infrequently accessed. This helps you optimize costs while still maintaining the required level of data durability and availability.

For data transfer, minimize costs by keeping data within the same AWS region whenever possible. Leverage services like AWS Direct Connect or AWS VPN to establish private network connections and reduce data transfer costs. If you need to serve content to a global audience, consider using Amazon CloudFront for content delivery and caching, which can help reduce data transfer costs and improve performance.

Utilize Real-Time Data and Actionable Insights

One of the biggest advantages of the cloud is access to real-time data. AWS provides a wealth of tools and services that enable you to monitor, analyze, and visualize cost and usage data. However, turning this data into actionable insights can be a challenge. We recommend to start by identifying the key metrics that matter most to your business. This could include things like cost per application, cost per customer, or cost per business unit. By focusing on the metrics that align with your goals, you can quickly identify areas for optimization.

Experiment with tools like AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Cost and Usage Reports to create visualizations and reports that make sense for your organization. Don’t be afraid to iterate and refine your approach until you find the insights that drive meaningful change.

Design Effective Cost Allocation Strategies

Effective cost allocation is essential for understanding the true value of your cloud investments and driving accountability across your organization. By accurately allocating costs to specific applications, teams, or business units, you can gain a clearer picture of where your money is being spent and identify opportunities for optimization.

When designing cost allocation strategy, consider factors like your organizational structure, business goals, and the level of granularity required. Tagging resources is a powerful way to enable fine-grained cost allocation, allowing you to slice and dice your cost data in meaningful ways. Cost allocation is not a one-time exercise. As your business evolves and your cloud usage changes, be prepared to adapt your allocation strategies to ensure they remain relevant and effective.

Embrace Proactive Cost Optimization

One of the most important shifts to make in your cost optimization journey is moving from a reactive to a proactive approach. Rather than waiting for unexpected spikes in your AWS bill to prompt action, proactively monitor and optimize your costs on an ongoing basis. Leveraging tools like AWS Budgets and AWS Cost Anomaly Detection to set up alerts and notifications when costs exceed predefined thresholds is one way to accomplish this. This allows you to quickly identify and address issues before they spiral out of control.

Regularly review your resource utilization and right-size your instances to ensure you’re not paying for more than you need. Take advantage of cost-saving opportunities like Reserved Instances and Spot Instances where appropriate.

Most importantly, make cost optimization a shared responsibility across your organization. Engage developers, operations teams, and business stakeholders in the process, and foster a culture of continuous improvement.

Continuously Monitor and Optimize

Cost optimization is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. It’s essential to continuously monitor your AWS costs and usage, and proactively identify opportunities for optimization.

Use tools like AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Budgets to track your spending, set custom budgets, and receive alerts when costs exceed predefined thresholds. This means regularly reviewing cost and usage reports to identify trends and anomalies, and to take corrective actions as needed.

Engage your development and operations teams in the cost optimization process. Encourage a culture of cost awareness and provide training and best practices to help teams make informed decisions about resource usage. Implement tagging strategies to allocate costs to specific applications, teams, or business units, fostering accountability and enabling more granular cost analysis.

Conclusion

AWS cost optimization is a multi-faceted discipline that requires a combination of technical best practices, financial acumen, and organizational alignment. By following the best practices elaborated on above, you can effectively manage AWS costs and maximize the value of cloud investments.

Remember, cost optimization is a journey, not a destination. Stay proactive, stay curious, and keep exploring new ways to optimize your AWS costs. With the right strategies and mindset, you can unlock the full potential of the cloud while keeping your expenses under control. For any questions about cost optimization, please reach out to either myself or another WEI cloud solutions expert. By embracing these cloud cost optimization strategies and leveraging WEI’s expertise, you can unlock the full potential of cloud computing while maintaining a cost-effective and sustainable cloud infrastructure.

Next Steps: Enterprises are increasingly shifting to a hybrid cloud strategy to support and modernize their operations model. Learn why this is critical to meaningful digital transformation. Download our free whitepaper, to find out more.

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The managed SD-WAN global market was estimated at $7 billion in 2022. It is expected to grow to $19 billion in 2027 for a 22% annual growth rate. While not every organization can benefit from an SD-WAN solution, all organizations do use wireless. The managed Wi-Fi global market that was almost $5 billion in 2022 is expected to grow 21% a year to $12.5 billion in 2027. Managed security tells a similar story as managed VPN and network monitoring is projected to grow to $88.5 billion in 2027.

Wi-Fi is everywhere, security is required, and more companies are utilizing SD-WAN due to the growing complexity of business networks and the adaptation of multi-cloud computing and hybrid work models. In the past, digital transformation was a strategy to gain a competitive advantage over industry competitors. It is now imperative because organizations are feeling pressure from multiple fronts every day. That calls for greater agility, flexibility, and scale.

The Demand for Premier IT Services

In today’s fast-paced digital age, users expect instantaneous results and an unparalleled digital experience. This consumer-level expectation has seamlessly transitioned into the B2B realm. However, many companies lack the expertise and personnel to offer top tier digital services, leading them to seek external partners capable of meeting these expectations.

Digitally transformed organizations must retain robust enterprise network services that are characterized by stellar performance and unwavering availability. They require tools that provide their clients with the agility and flexibility that is essential for achieving business goals. Whether it is hastening the launch of new branches or adapting infrastructure to evolving business needs, mergers, or regulatory shifts, every enterprise must be ready for the next challenge. Regardless of what business you are in, the objective is delivering reliable, secure, and high-quality services for a price that makes sense.

Embracing the Cloud Paradigm

Just as many of the world’s largest enterprises have transitioned their applications, infrastructure, and digital resources to the cloud, smaller organizations of all industries must follow suit for the following reasons:

• Unparalleled scalability offered by the cloud
• Greater cost efficiency by shifting from a CapEx to an OpEx model
• Simplified management with a centralized dashboard
• Regular rollouts of innovative services and tools
• Access to robust security measures to safeguard clients’ data
• Large selection of customizable services and solutions for customer requirements.

Juniper Mist Intelligence

Juniper Mist harnesses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics to elevate user experiences and streamline operations across wireless, wired, and SD-WAN domains. With AI-driven capabilities, Mist automates routine tasks and offers deep insights into network operations to ensure consistent quality in both wired and wireless networks. Beyond that, Mist’s ability to offer indoor location services and predict potential issues before they occur further sets it apart from other providers. This innovative blend of cloud intelligence is why users have reported operational labor savings of up to 90%.

Real Cost Savings

As you may have guessed, it is Juniper Networks that can help digitally transformed organizations achieve significant savings in OpEx and TCO in regards to customer infrastructure. Real, tangible cost savings were calculated for managed SD-WAN, Wi-Fi, and wired LAN services using a business case model developed by ACG Research. The model calculates revenue, CapEx, and OpEx for two scenarios:

1. Managed network services with Juniper Networks’ wired, wireless, and SD-WAN driven by Juniper Mist AI
2. Managed network services without Juniper Networks’ wired, wireless, and SD-WAN driven by Juniper Mist AI

The model assumed a portfolio of Juniper SSR routers for SD-WAN, access points for Wi-Fi, and EX switches for wired access. There is also a pricing model that marked up the base expense of the network infrastructure by 70%. A Business Analytics Engine (BAE) was used to calculate gross margin and the cost of labor involved in delivering the designated services. Some of the final numbers included the following:

Businesses today require top-tier IT services. With Juniper Networks’ cloud solutions powered by Mist, digitally transformed organizations can meet these demands while also achieving a favorable return on investment and profit margin.

Next Steps: This white paper by WEI identifies how Juniper Networks’ location-based networking helps higher education institutes overcome complex technology challenges. Readers will better identify:

• Concerns of higher education IT professionals
• Why network infrastructure is a differentiator
• Challenge of improving remote experiences
• Value of a virtual network assistant

The post An AI-Driven SD-WAN Solution That Has The Numbers To Back Up Its Promise appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

The rise of cloud-based computing coincides with the increase of as-a-service models. Many companies realize that transitioning to this business model offers significant opportunities for business development, growth, and financial transparency. Enterprises adding new technologies to IT infrastructure can stretch existing networks beyond capacity. This is why many companies are finding that Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) is exactly what they need to fulfill their business objectives. In this article, we discuss the basics of NaaS, its benefits, and why these advantages can help with the costliness and complexity of managing multiple networks within your organization.

The Basics Of NaaS

Before we get into the benefits of NaaS, let’s briefly review what this cloud service model entails. explains, “NaaS allows customers to operate their own networks without maintaining their own networking infrastructure. Like other cloud services, NaaS vendors run networking functions using software, essentially allowing companies to set up their own networks entirely without hardware. All they need is Internet connectivity.” This emerging model can give organizations much-needed flexibility. Instead of buying and installing rigid network hardware that eventually ages, businesses can pay a monthly subscription for network services.

Essentially, those who use NaaS can more easily move network infrastructure to the cloud allowing users to operate their own networks without maintaining their own networking infrastructure. The NaaS model can bring countless benefits to organizations of all sizes and the Networking solution can be an incredibly helpful resource.

The Benefits Of NaaS

NaaS simplifies management of technologies and is cheaper to operate than traditional network infrastructure. It can provide organizations with the flexibility and agility needed by keeping up with the rapid and constant changes in IT. As HPE GreenLake for Networking points out, “To put this in context, the last 8 years has seen us jump from Wi-Fi 5 through Wi-Fi 6 and now into Wi-Fi 6E. Technology iterates quickly, as do business requirements.” NaaS can help your enterprise stay ahead of the curve.

No matter what size of office you run, NaaS offers scalable solutions to support any business from federal agencies, healthcare sectors, education, and much more. HPE GreenLake for Networking provides all of these advantages and then some. A few examples include:

1. Lower Cost

Considering that we are in a post-pandemic era where enterprises expect more and more out of a limited IT budget, this particular benefit could be the biggest of all. NaaS reduces numerous IT costs including infrastructure, hardware, software and operations. This service also offers flexibility with monthly subscriptions instead of being charged large networking costs all at once, allowing for a more predictable budget. This consumption model allows for better transparency when balancing your annual budget.

2. Optimizes Performance

Optimization is a common challenge for organizations that are looking to digitally transform. NaaS can ensure your network operates efficiently by determining how capable it is of supporting the amount of traffic you are getting. Your provider can then make any necessary adjustments.

3. Proactive Network Management

Many organizations practice a reactive maintenance strategy. This can lead to unexpected downtime, especially when dealing with the network demands of modern enterprises. Instead of having your IT team spend a significant amount of time on troubleshooting the network, NaaS solutions can and will predict network issues early on with proactive monitoring. In regards to HPE GreenLake for Networking, a reports, “Interviewed customers noted a significant decrease in time-to-market for the global IT projects after the HPE GreenLake investment.” This survey found that GreenLake customers could reduce deployment of global IT projects by 75%.

4. Improved Security

Data breaches are at an all-time high with one ransomware attack every in 2022, which is an increase of 20% compared to 2019. These attacks are a concern for businesses of every size. However, one of the many benefits of NaaS is that it helps protect sensitive data in any industry by implementing best practices for IT security. HPE GreenLake for Networking can also provide detailed insights in order to make sure your network is at optimal operating standards and free of security vulnerabilities.

Conclusion

In general, implementing Network-as-a-Service has a variety of advantages. Enterprises are moving to the cloud every day. As such, they will need to determine how their data will be networked. NaaS enables you to get the network infrastructure help your organization needs and a model you can afford. It’s a terrific way to transform your business, optimize processes, increase security, and more.

The overall benefits of increasing agility and reducing network complexity enable organizations to have optimized networks that help dynamic environments grow. Contact the networking experts at WEI to find out how you can take advantage of this as a service model for your organization.

Next Steps: Digitally transforming your company can become less challenging with HPE Aruba Networking’s flexible approach to networking. Learn more about how NaaS can take your network performance to the next level by downloading our white paper titled, “.”

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Network as a Service (NaaS) offers many advantages for network management teams such as flexibility and increased customization. It is an important way for companies to configure their network infrastructure and allows customers to operate their own networks without the clunky hardware; all that is needed is internet connectivity. As the technology world continues its shift in the “as a service” era, this standardized NaaS offering that HPE GreenLake for Networking makes possible should come as no surprise in GreenLake’s latest expansion. It is the first standardized version of NaaS, a breakthrough for seamless cloud services. In this article we review the benefits of NaaS, the eight new enterprise NaaS offerings from HPE GreenLake for Networking, and how they can improve network application and performance management.

The Advantages Of NaaS

This spring’s groundbreaking release of the GreenLake cloud service comes at an ideal time with NaaS adoption on the rise. According to the 2022 IDC NaaS Survey, 37% of organizations across the globe have already deployed NaaS for cloud or edge use cases, and another 40% plan to deploy NaaS within the next 24 months. Given its many advantages, it’s no surprise that a large number of enterprises are utilizing NaaS. Cloud services like HPE GreenLake offer more flexibility and greater customization since changes are made to the network via software and not hardware, ultimately giving enterprises the ability to manage multiple networking domains. Additionally, NaaS makes it possible for providers to offer both networking and security services, creating a more secure network infrastructure.

Another advantage of NaaS is the improved quality of service. With enhanced network management, customers can focus on the quality of their work without being hindered by IT issues. The right NaaS partner will help you optimize your network streams, ensuring your data is getting to the cloud correctly.

NaaS is exactly what businesses need to fulfill their objectives and grow. Not only does it offer more flexibility and security, but it also reduces many IT costs. The right NaaS partner can make their digital transformation process as smooth as possible, minimizing expenses as you implement new processes and equipment. Another way costs can be reduced is through a recurring subscription-based fee that HPE GreenLake offers. You can learn more about the benefits of HPE GreenLake for Networking by reading our article that lists the six essential reasons companies should consider this type of cloud service.

Eight New NaaS Offerings From HPE GreenLake for Networking And Their Benefits

With the announcement of eight new standardized offerings from HPE GreenLake for Networking package is one of the most innovative edge to cloud platforms on the market today. The offerings are:

1. Indoor Wireless as a Service
2. Outdoor Wireless as a Service
3. Remote Wireless as a Service
4. Wired Access as a Service
5. Wired Aggregation as a Service
6. Wired Core as a Service
7. SD-Branch as a Service
8. HPE Aruba Networking User Experience Insight (UXI)

These eight new NaaS offerings are essentially bundled packages that will enable partners to design and deliver service packages straight to the customers, allowing them to build around whichever service is needed with subscription models. This is essential for those who are looking for a networking solution aligned with their need for a flexible and dynamic network. Maintaining a network is a substantial investment for a company, so one of the biggest advantages of this opportunity is flexibility.

The new services also help improve customer satisfaction since there is a growing demand for NaaS. These offerings provide unprecedented levels of flexibility and speed, leading to an accelerated time to revenue.

The HPE GreenLake services simplify the process of obtaining and implementing NaaS and allow customers to align network spend to usage needs while also ensuring the network is ready to support business objectives. When businesses apply these offerings, they will be able to ensure their network is always ready to support business goals that need to quickly adapt.

Most organizations certainly saw the need for flexibility when COVID-19 created the urgent need to support a large number of employees working from home. The necessity to constantly adapt has driven a greater interest in service options like HPE GreenLake to help enterprises with central network management and security, which are some of the key factors of NaaS.

Implementing NaaS has a variety of advantages: cutting costs, quality of service, maximizing your performance and more. If you’re looking to better your network management, contact WEI to get started.

Next Steps: Download and read our free white paper, “.”

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HPE has announced a significant and holistic expansion to their cloud service that will accommodate a faster and more simplified digital transformation journey for data-first enterprises. The edge-to-cloud platform has taken “a dramatic step forward in the architecture of the platform with compute, storage and networking services all available in a unified platform.” Let’s review of this simplified cloud service expansion.

HPE GreenLake For Networking

According to , “70% of organizations have a digital transformation strategy or are working on one.” Many of these same enterprises rely on their network servers to leverage new business opportunities and deliver high-quality digital experiences to customers and employees. Complex network systems and legacy hardware can make it difficult for IT to meet evolving business objectives. This is why it’s crucial for organizations to keep up with network requirements, and that’s where the HPE GreenLake expansion comes in to help by offering customers greater flexibility in building and managing their infrastructure. Whether your network is at the edge, in a public cloud, or elsewhere, GreenLake has you covered.

HPE announced eight new enterprise NaaS offerings from Aruba, specifically developed to simplify the deployment of NaaS, which will make it possible for customers to align network spend-to-usage needs:

• Indoor Wireless as a Service
• Outdoor Wireless as a Service
• Remote Wireless as a Service
• Wired Access as a Service
• SD-Branch as a Service
• Wired Aggregation as a Service
• Wired Core as a Service
• Aruba User Experience Insight (UXI)

These eight standardized services are enhanced for channel partners to operate in network environments including wireless, wired, and SD-Branch to provide the flexibility that many organizations desire to better protect their cloud network and maximize investments.

Data Storage With HPE GreenLake

Data helps organizations operate their business models and further accelerates their progression. It is a vital principle of any modern enterprise, and why so many businesses are quickly becoming data-first in their digital transformations. Using HPE GreenLake for block storage as a service (STaaS) can advance your modernization from edge to cloud, reducing complexity that may be slowing you down.

HPE GreenLake has included file and object storage along with block storage and data protection. This provides self-service agility that can ultimately lead to new apps and services that free up IT resources, giving them more time to work on other strategic projects. Additionally, this service will help customers handle data-intensive workloads. Choosing from several storage configurations will make projects like AI and machine-learning run smoothly.

This new extension also helps hybrid clouds get backup as a service (BaaS) with HPE’s enhanced backup and recovery service. HPE GreenLake is a cost-effective approach for storing long-term backups in a public cloud as you only pay for what you consume. You can utilize the full potential of your organization’s data with a seamless cloud experience that ties everything together such as agility of cloud operations, consumption-based data services, and the ability to run any app without compromise.

“The self-provisioning storage cloud services are going to provide customers the capability to do storage pricing comparisons against public cloud,” says the vice president of cloud consumption for Advizex, Joe VanPatten, “If you are going to compete with public cloud, you need those self-provisioning capabilities.”

HPE GreenLake High-Performance Computing

The high-performance compute (HPC) service of the expansion is versatile and secure. It is designed for organizations to support challenging compute and data-intensive workloads. With multi-generational IT environments being complex, the new service removes the difficulty and costs associated with traditional HPC operations. HPE GreenLake delivers pre-bundled services based on purpose-built HPC systems, software, and storage. This also applies to networking that comes in many options.

HPE’s new simplified compute option takes on the labor-intensive responsibility of configuring, installing, and operating compute resources. Your IT team can use their time focusing on more valuable projects with the help of GreenLake cloud service. It offers simplicity and efficiency by optimizing modules delivered directly to your data center or edge location.

Shifting to a cloud platform with an innovative compute foundation can help modernize data everywhere, from edge to cloud. GreenLake cloud service gives your enterprise the speed boost required for our digital-first world while also having control over costs and security of your digital transformation initiatives.

“The breakthrough new GreenLake release represents another dramatic step in HPE’s transformation into a cloud services software powerhouse,” says HPE executive Keith White.

And he’s right. This service ultimately provides more choice and flexibility for hybrid IT environments. If it’s time to modernize your business, explore this innovative service that gives you more options for an easier operation wherever your data lives. The HPE GreenLake Cloud Service experience is available this month. Contact WEI today to enhance your hybrid cloud management.

Next Steps: As you begin preparing your enterprise for the move to the hybrid cloud, you’ll want to make sure you don’t miss any critical steps. Download and read our free and informative checklist, now.

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