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.

Komodor Announces GA of New Kubernetes Cost Optimization Capabilities

Kubernetes has revolutionized how we manage and scale containerized applications, the flip side of this robustness is often a rising cloud bill. As you navigate the complexities of cluster growth across teams and applications, cost management can become a genuine headache. Enter Komodor’s newly released Cost Optimization Suite. In this blog post, we’ll unpack how this feature-rich addition to the Komodor platform will empower you to optimize costs without sacrificing performance.

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.).

Unlock significant cost savings with Azure VM Reservations

Azure VM Reservations are the best solution for optimizing cloud expenses. Users can obtain discounted prices for virtual machines in Microsoft Azure by committing to a one- or three-year term. This strategic approach ensures predictable costs, enhances budget management, and is ideal for workloads with consistent resource requirements. Leveraging Azure VM Reservations empowers businesses to achieve significant cost savings while maintaining flexibility and scalability in the cloud infrastructure.

Azure Cosmos DB Cost Optimization to avoid unforeseen expenses

Cost optimization is critical to managing any cloud-based service, including Azure Cosmos DB. Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service that allows you to scale your storage and throughput across regions. Although it offers a highly scalable and flexible platform for creating applications, Azure Cosmos DB cost optimization is important to ensure efficient resource utilization, avoid unforeseen expenses, and estimate costs more accurately.

How CloudSpend helps reduce the costs associated with your AWS Spot Instances

Maximise ROI in Spot Instances with CloudSpend In our fast-paced tech world, the need for scalable and budget-friendly cloud resources is unprecedented. AWS is the frontrunner in providing organizations with a wide range of computing services. Through its Amazon EC2 Spot Instances program, often known more simply Spot Instances, AWS offers a cost-effective alternative plan to address an organization’s resource-intensive workload requirements.

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.

5 Strategies to Reduce Your AWS Lambda Expenses Efficiently

As a serverless computing service, AWS Lambda has revolutionized deployment with its pay-as-you-go model. Yet, users often grapple with unexpected costs. This guide underscores the criticality of cost optimization and prepares to unveil quintessential strategies to trim down your Lambda bills without compromising performance.

15 Ways to Reduce IT Costs in 2024

IT leaders are often caught in a tug-of-war between advancing technology and managing costs. In 2024, the state of the economy is only highlighting this divide. For business and IT leaders alike, this begs the common question: how can we reduce IT costs? Demands for IT continue to spike—especially as the cybersecurity landscape shifts and the appetite for remote work increases.

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.

How-to surface your multi-cloud costs with SquaredUp

Working in the cloud is certainly convenient, but the convenience comes at a price. With more and more organizations transitioning to the cloud, and a rise in preference towards cloud-native applications, hosting most, if not all the components of your business in the cloud is becoming increasingly common.

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.

Powering Forecasting with Machine Learning: The Future of Managing Cloud Costs

As cloud computing continues to grow in popularity, so does the need for accurate cloud cost forecasting. With cloud costs being variable and unpredictable, it can be difficult to know how much you’re going to spend each month, a problem that can lead to budget overruns and financial problems. This makes cloud cost forecasting a necessary step in owning and managing your cloud efficiently. In simple terms, cloud cost forecasting is the process of predicting future cloud costs.

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.