Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

December 2023

15 Datadog Alternatives Worth Your Consideration

As an engineer or CTO, you already know that monitoring your tech stack is essential for maintaining optimal performance, security, and health. The thing is, building and hosting an observability platform for your full stack’s logs, metrics, and more is quite time-consuming and can be costly. One of the top contenders if you are seeking a SaaS-based monitoring and observability tool is Datadog. Perhaps you already use Datadog but would like to switch to another observability platform.

Using Karpenter With EKS Fargate To Cut Costs On EKS Infrastructure

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) has revolutionized the way organizations deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications using Kubernetes. However, optimizing costs on EKS infrastructure remains a challenge for many. Enter Karpenter, a Kubernetes-native node autoscaler designed to improve resource efficiency.

What Is Cloud Infrastructure? Everything You Need To Know

Essentially, cloud infrastructure consists of a set of virtual tools and resources that help deliver cloud-based services and products. For companies, cloud infrastructure liberates them from building their own physical data centers. Instead, they rent computing capacity on a need-by-need basis. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In this post, we’ll define cloud infrastructure, examine cloud computing types, delivery models, and more.

What Is Cloud Architecture? A Guide To Cost-Efficient Design

Cloud computing offers many advantages over on-premises environments, including scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. Yet, simply using a “lift and shift” strategy — where you move your application as-is from an on-premise environment to the cloud with minimal, if any, modification — can lead to several issues (such as inefficient design, bloated costs, etc.).

What Is FinOps? What You Need To Know In Under 10 Minutes

DevOps. DevSecOps. AIOps. NoOps. RevOps. FinOps. It’s hard to keep up sometimes. No worries, though. CloudZero sits at the intersection of finance and operations — and we recently joined the FinOps Foundation, which brings together FinOps practitioners to collaborate, learn, and network. In this guide, we’ll share more about FinOps and why it matters to you as a SaaS company that relies on cloud services and OpEx financials.

Common Cloud Cost Questions To Expect From Finance (And How To Answer Them)

As an engineer at a SaaS company, it’s your job to build the software products that make your company profitable. Problem-solving is what you love to do, and it’s a wonderful feeling when you can create something that makes a positive difference for your company.

50+ Key SaaS Statistics To Know In Under 15 Minutes

Getting the right information at the right time can dramatically change the direction of your business. Yet, you may not have enough time to keep up with everything. We get it. So, our team pulled a few all-nighters (so you don’t have to) and brings you the key SaaS statistics every SaaS leader, team, and engineer should see right now.

Product Release Notes November 2023

One of the major issues with first-generation cloud cost management platforms is their tendency to become shelfware. Low data quality, high barriers to entry for new users, and low signal-to-noise ratio made it hard to drive cost accountability among engineering teams — and pushed many organizations to nearly give up on it.

10 Google Cloud Alternatives You Should Seriously Consider Today

Over the last few years, Google Cloud has grown at the fastest rate of any cloud service provider today. From 2020 to 2021, Google Cloud’s IaaS offering, GCP, grew 64%, followed by Microsoft Azure (51%) and Alibaba Cloud (42%), according to Gartner. Yet Google Cloud isn’t flawless. Here’s what we mean and some of the top Google Cloud alternatives you’ll want to consider today.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Vs. Google Cloud Platform (GCP): Pricing Breakdown

Although Amazon Web Services (AWS) still holds about a third of the cloud services market, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has been growing rapidly in recent years. Among the reasons for GCP’s rapid adoption is its simpler pricing structure compared to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Is that really the case? And how do AWS and GCP pricing differ? But first, a quick background.

EKS Cost Traps: 3 Common Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, Kubernetes has emerged as the go-to orchestration platform, revolutionizing the way applications are deployed, scaled, and managed in containerized environments. As organizations increasingly adopt Kubernetes, with platforms like Amazon’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) leading the charge, the importance of cost management within these environments has come to the forefront.

The Era Of Efficient Engineering: 3 Takeaways From AWS re:Invent 2023

I GOT MENTIONED BY AMAZON’S CTO!!!!! Sorry. Just had to get that out of the way. Another year, another pilgrimage to Sin City to rub shoulders with the architects of Amazon, to talk shop with the world’s leading software companies, and to hear the latest announcements from all the wave-makers on the expo floor. It’s also an opportunity for the cloud industry, now endowed with the very serious task of keeping much of our economy humming, to live a little.

Kubernetes Vs. Docker Vs. OpenShift: What's The Difference?

Containers are a big deal today. Because containers are software units that contain all the code, runtime, and dependencies required to run a distributed application, they help engineers test and run apps on any device and platform without compatibility issues. Organizations can use containers to reduce engineering costs, speed up deployments, develop and test AI models, and automate more processes. You probably want those benefits as well.

Cloud Migration 101: The Complete Guide To Migrating To The Cloud

Cloud migration is the new gold rush, judging from the results of a survey involving 1,283 IT professionals. The survey shows that 88% of companies already use the cloud for some applications and data. Another 80% said they will have moved to cloud and co-location services by 2025. While 87% of respondents said the pandemic accelerated their cloud migration strategy, many companies’ transition plans had been in the works for years.

AWS Bans RI Resale - What This Means For Cloud Users

This holiday season, AWS made waves by dropping a bombshell announcement: “AWS does not permit the sale of reserved instances (RIs) obtained through a discount program (per AWS Service Terms 5.5).” In other words, AWS is banning the resale of discounted RIs in their RI Marketplace. (See the full policy here, section 5.5.) The ban officially goes into effect on January 1, 2024.

How To Use AWS Organizations To Optimize Costs

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a plethora of cloud-based services that cater to various needs, from computing power and storage to machine learning and analytics. As organizations scale their cloud infrastructure, managing multiple accounts and services can become increasingly complex. This is where AWS Organizations comes into play.