Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating the state of the UK cloud market, and for good reason. While the submissions and commentary already submitted to the CMA point to various concerning practices, one issue stands out as the single biggest threat to a healthy, competitive landscape: excessive free cloud credits. This tactic, employed by the dominant hyperscalers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform), is akin to a drug dealer offering free samples.

Today many of your cloud solutions will be connected to a private network within Microsoft Azure for purposes like: An Azure virtual network can support a number of different IaaS, PaaS or SaaS resources being connected to it to support your growing cloud network estate.

If you’ve recently migrated your data from one major cloud provider to another, you may have already noticed one of our top stories from last month. If not, we’ve got good news, so keep reading! And there’s even better news if you’re the type to get excited over the chance to learn more about FinOps and hone your craft.

Azure provides a wide array of services, each with its own pricing model. Conducting detailed cost analysis helps organizations understand where their money is being spent within Azure. It allows them to identify areas of overspending or underutilization and optimize their resources accordingly. By analysing costs, organizations can identify unused or underutilized resources and either scale them down or decommission them altogether.

Proper backups are universally acknowledged as essential, yet they grow increasingly tedious and prone to error as DevOps complexity escalates. While some managed database services offer automated backup solutions, the scope of your backup requirements is likely to expand as the business and products scale. There's a considerable chance you'll find yourself hosting your own databases or stateful services, a task that can seem daunting in its demand for precision and reliability.

Research firm, IDC, published a study in early February 2024 predicting that Google Cloud Platform (GCP) customers break even after just 10 months. Moreover, the study, The Business Value of Google Cloud IaaS, reported that after migrating to GCP, the participants were on track to achieve a 318% ROI in five years. Here’s the thing. Achieving these milestones requires a robust GCP cost monitoring and optimization plan.

Your business could be spending tens of thousands on SaaS applications—but are you really using them to your full advantage? Research says probably not. Today, the average business uses 130 SaaS apps for day-to-day operations, a number that has steadily climbed over the past decade. Of those, 65% fall under the veil of shadow IT, meaning the IT team is unaware they were ever adopted.