There are several ways to migrate to the cloud today — None of which are an equal path to modernizing on-premises applications and workflows. Lift and shift migration promises cost savings, speed, and less effort compared to other cloud migration strategies. But are these claims true? In this guide, we’ll cover whether a lift and shift migration strategy actually saves you money and effort when migrating to the cloud.

Getting engineers to take action to optimize spending can feel like an eternal struggle for many cloud-based companies. In fact, this particular issue is consistently considered to be one of the number-one cost challenges modern companies face. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way. Below are a few creative ways companies have gamified FinOps practices to make the learning process more interesting and rewarding for engineers.

There are several high-performing database services available on Amazon Web Services (AWS). When you need to handle caching, Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), real-time data, session stores, or personalization, you can choose one of these options. Examples of these high-performance database services include Amazon RDS, Aurora, MemoryDB, DynamoDB, Neptune, and ElastiCache. We often get questions about which AWS database service is best between RDS and Aurora.

At CloudZero, we’re in the business of driving positive business change. Whenever we work with a client, our goal is to share insights rooted in our FinOps perspective and platform expertise that helps customers save on cloud costs and build strategies for engineering-led optimizations. Each experience is curated for the clients FinOps maturity stage and unique business goals; that’s what personalized service is all about.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about The Art of True Chargebacks and how VMware Tanzu CloudHealth makes simple work of the cost reallocation of cloud expenses. In addition to being a refresher on cost reallocation with Tanzu CloudHealth, it was also shared as a kickoff of our newly released cutting-edge Cost Reallocation API. This officially available API revolutionizes the seamless automation of chargeback reallocation across diverse geographies, brands, business units (BUs), and product lines.

The Slack messaging app is popular because it is easy to use, affordable, and highly customizable. With Slack, you can collaborate in teams and with colleagues in real-time, accessing files from anywhere. Slack is also widely used because it enables users to create and join channels. In addition, it integrates with multiple apps and services, working seamlessly with the tools you already use. In addition, Slack offers cost-effective pricing plans.

CloudZero’s overarching goal is to help companies maximize the return on their cloud investment. To do that, it’s essential that engineers be accountable for their cloud costs. They must prioritize cost equal to quality and security and keep costs in check from the earliest days of development through the most advanced stages of production. Year after year, getting engineers to take action tops the list of challenges FinOps practitioners face.

Learn how new modern application optimization modules built on the Cisco Full-Stack Observability Platform can help you solve cloud cost and resource optimization challenges for your Kubernetes workloads. Controlling unpredictable cloud cost and resource utilization has become critical for organizations to ensure the profitability of modern workloads.

Capital One offers a variety of financial products, such as credit cards, financial accounts, and auto financing. Now, Capital One might appear as a leading financial institution. But it views itself as a technology company that provides financial services — rather than a financial services company that uses technology. Capital One has differentiated itself as an innovator throughout its 30-year history.

Amazon Simple Storage (S3) has become a cornerstone in the world of cloud computing, offering scalable and secure object storage solutions for a wide range of applications. However, as data accumulates over time, managing it in an efficient manner becomes a challenge. This is where S3 Lifeycle Rules shine. These rules allow us to automate the transition of data between different storage classes and even schedule automatic deletions, which allows users to optimize costs and operational efficiency.

In our first blog post, we introduced the concept of cloud unit economics—a system to measure cost and usage metrics. It helps maximize cloud value for better outcomes per dollar spent. We reviewed what cloud unit economics is, why it’s crucial to FinOps success, and how it enables organizations to unlock the full business value potential of cloud computing.

If you’re sick with a cold then measuring your body temperature is a wise move or maybe if things are really bad a visit to a doctor might result in testing vs. what are considered “normal” levels in order to diagnose the issue; seasonal flu or infection? To improve our health after picking up a bad bug, we do things that affect our situation back to normal levels once again where we can then declare ourselves healthy.

When Apache Spark works well, it works really well. Sometimes, though, users find themselves asking this frustrating question. Spark is such a popular large-scale data processing framework because it is capable of performing more computations and carrying out more stream processing than many other data processing solutions. Compared to popular conventional systems like MapReduce, Spark is 10-100x faster.

As an engineer, engineering supervisor, or CTO, you are responsible for making architectural decisions that help your team create innovative products and optimize technology costs. The type of architecture you select affects how much control you have over data, infrastructure, and customization options. The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model is one of the major architectures you can use to deliver services to customers — anytime and anywhere.

More enterprises continue to adopt managed data integration services like AWS Glue. According to the Data Pipelines Market Study Report, 65% of organizations now prefer cloud-based or hybrid cloud data integration solutions. And how exactly do they stand to benefit? This article explains the craze by covering AWS Glue in detail, which happens to be one of the most popular cloud data integration services today. We’ll cover.

Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform, has become an essential part of modern businesses, offering a vast array of services and resources. However, effective cost management in Azure is crucial to avoid unexpected expenses and optimize spending. While Azure provides its native tools for cost management, several third-party solutions offer advanced features and capabilities to help you make the most of your Azure resources. This blog will explore the top 15 Azure cost management tools.

When it comes to September’s cloud cost news, cloud-based organizations will have to take a little bit of sour news along with the sweet: Cloud costs continue to rise with inflation, and IBM cloud service users will soon see price hikes, but AWS and Azure have both recently released updates that may help you keep your costs under control. Read on to see how these changes may affect your company in the coming months.

Measuring and monitoring unit economics can help your SaaS brand make informed business and engineering decisions. But how do you get that data and what exactly are SaaS unit economics? We’ll cover exactly what SaaS unit economics are, metrics you should monitor, how to calculate your unit economics, and the tools you can use to be successful.

Getting to cloud efficiency is both an art and a science. The art has long been CloudZero’s specialty: giving engineers complete visibility into the costs associated with their cloud infrastructure, putting it all in a business context, and helping them make proactive decisions about how to build and scale efficiently. In other words, the art is on the human side. Giving human engineers the visibility and context to understand and control cloud costs.

It can be challenging to translate complex engineering concepts to business leaders. If you frame things well, though, you can have more productive conversations that lead to greater alignment between engineering and the rest of the business. With that in mind, I’d like to share some of my recommendations for discussing cost with your leadership team — and hope it might help you have stronger cost conversations.

Implementing any cloud development project can be tricky, and frustrating. Especially when you are pressured with time, reactive approaches, or cost-saving scenarios. However, there are some things you can do to implement solutions in your cloud architecture for long-term scalability and risk mitigation. Rather than short-term fixes until it arises again, consider designing your cloud with failure in mind, or speculating worst-case scenarios. It might sound counterintuitive or obvious.