Why Harnessing Hourly Granularity Can Optimize Cloud Savings

If you’re working in the cloud, you’re part of a rapidly growing industry. Global spending on public cloud services is set to double, reaching $482 billion in 2024, up from $243 billion in 2019, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.5%

What’s the takeaway? With organizations increasingly depending on cloud services, managing costs effectively is a must. Otherwise, the expenses will pile up, and money will flow down.

But there is a saving grace, and that’s understanding cloud cost at a granular level. Even better, some third-party cloud platforms offer this feature hourly.

But let’s get granular on how cloud hourly cost matters and how it can benefit your cloud strategy.

Cost Management and Optimization

Let’s face it. Collecting data hourly is better than daily. Daily reports offer a simple summary but lead to slower responses to issues detected during the day. An hourly analysis provides real-time monitoring, operational efficiency, performance tuning, and anomaly detection.

This is a huge advantage when it comes to managing costs. By using hourly cost data, organizations can monitor cloud spending closely, saving money and managing budgets more effectively.

Here’s what you’ll find in an hourly analysis for cloud optimization.

Detailed Cost Tracking & Identifying Trends

Hourly data gives detailed insights into cloud spending, helping you track and control costs precisely. This level of detail lets businesses monitor expenses closely, find where to cut costs without sacrificing performance, allocate budgets more effectively, and avoid unnecessary expenses by knowing when and how resources are used.

But wait, there’s more…

Businesses can pinpoint high and low activity periods by obtaining information on hourly usage patterns and trends. This info helps fine-tune how resources are used and cut down on unnecessary spending, making operations leaner and more efficient.

Resource Utilization

Everyone appreciates ROI, and in the cloud, organizations can boost application performance by 15% through cloud optimization strategies, with efficient resource utilization playing a key role.

But how does seeing this on an hourly granular level optimize resource allocation?

Efficiency & Scaling Decisions

Monitoring cloud usage every hour helps you make the most of your resources, reduce wasted cloud space, and avoid unnecessary costs associated with having too much capacity or experiencing performance issues.

By spotting cloud usage in real time, organizations can identify unused resources, such as idle storage, and optimize their cloud investments. Checking hourly means adjusting resources based on actual demand so you’re not left with too much or too little.

Even better? Hourly data helps you adjust scaling based on usage patterns, cutting costs during low usage and ensuring ample capacity during peak times. Efficient resource management is made simple.

Long story short: checking cloud usage hourly is key to using your resources well, making smart investments, and keeping up with demand.

Compliance and Reporting

Tracking hourly usage and costs is key to meeting regulations and keeping stakeholders informed. Different industries, such as health and finance, have compliance rules.

Accurate records are a strong asset for meeting these requirements, and hourly data provides the needed specifics for compliance.

Here’s what to expect from investing in hourly cloud data.

Regulatory Compliance & Transparent Reporting

Detailed hourly tracking is essential for ensuring compliance with various regulatory requirements. By maintaining accurate, real-time, and auditable records of resource usage and costs, organizations can meet stringent standards set by

– Data protection regulations like GDPR and HIPAA
– Financial regulations such as SOX and FISMA
– Industry-specific standards, including PCI DSS

This level of detail helps catch any unauthorized access or oddities immediately, keeping info safe and operations running smoothly.

But that’s not all! Hourly tracking aids in transparency when reporting to stakeholders. By giving detailed breakdowns of resource use and costs, stakeholders like investors, execs, and regulators get key insights into the organization’s efficiency and financial well-being in the cloud. This detailed approach helps improve financial planning, resource responsibility, and stakeholder trust.

Utilizing detailed cloud cost data showcases adherence to governance standards and sustainability goals, demonstrating a commitment to excellence.

Chargeback and Showback

As frequent cloud users, you know the importance of chargeback and showback. Their financial management techniques allocate cloud costs to specific departments or organizational projects to promote awareness and encourage cost-saving behaviors without directly affecting each unit’s budget.

Hourly data facilitates accurate chargeback or showback processes by providing detailed insights into department, project, or team resource usage. This level of detail promotes accountability by ensuring that costs are attributed to the appropriate units, encouraging responsible usage and cost-saving behaviors. By understanding their consumption patterns, departments can take steps to optimize their spending and manage their resources more efficiently.

Cost Allocation & Accountability

Incorporating hourly tracking into chargeback and showback processes boosts accuracy and transparency.. Getting detailed insights into resource usage by department, project, or team ensures every unit gets billed spot-on for what they use.

Breaking down cloud usage hourly helps finance teams craft more precise financial models and forecasts. This detailed data helps organizations:

– Assign costs accurately,

– Making budget management

– Expense justifications a breeze.

Accountability is a must in the cloud, and using FinOps and accurately allocating costs is vital for fostering accountability in an organization. Businesses promote responsible usage and cost-saving habits by ensuring that costs are linked to the right units—like departments, projects, or teams. Tracking costs hourly help each unit grasp their consumption trends in real time, empowering them to optimize spending. This boosts cost efficiency and enhances strategic decision-making, allowing departments to align resource usage with organizational objectives more effectively.

Strategic Decision Making

Access to detailed hourly data lets you make smarter strategic decisions about infrastructure investments, service deployment, and cloud strategy. By using data to guide decisions, organizations can improve their cloud strategy and infrastructure planning, leading to better financial and operational results.

Everyone appreciates transparent deals. Detailed usage data gives you leverage in cloud provider negotiations, securing better terms and optimizing contracts. No surprises in the fine print!

Let’s look at this a bit more closely.

Informed Decisions & Vendor Negotiations

Accessing detailed hourly data steps up the game when making smart decisions about infrastructure, service deployment, and overall cloud strategy. Organizations can spot patterns, boost performance, and manage resources more efficiently by diving into resource usage trends.

This data-driven approach gives businesses the tools to plan and carry out projects with laser-sharp precision and confidence, ensuring decisions are always grounded in solid evidence. Real-time analysis of usage patterns means you can make quick adjustments, lower risks, and get the most out of your investments. This keeps organizations nimble and ready to tackle changing needs, fostering growth and innovation.

To secure the best deal in vendor negotiations, having a thorough grasp of usage and costs gives your organization an advantage when discussing terms with cloud service providers. Armed with detailed data, companies can pinpoint areas of overspending or underuse, using this intel to push for better terms and deals. This level of insight allows organizations to demand tailor-made solutions that fit their needs to a tee. Plus, having a clear view of consumption helps businesses predict future needs more accurately, which can shape long-term contracts and bulk buying deals at discounted rates.

The end result? Not just saving money but also improving service quality and vendor relationships.

Anodot’s New Features Maximize Hourly Granularity in the Cloud 

We are proud to introduce that Hourly cost and usage are now available as part of Cost & Usage Explorer and Assets for GCP and will soon be available for AWS.

What is our Cost & Usage Explorer? Our exclusive features help you understand your billing, customize displays, and create detailed reports.

The core features of Cost & Usage Explorer capture the essence by helping you manage costs effectively. Categorize costs by service, region, account, and tags. Use filters to focus on specific resource costs and gain detailed insights from data points. Customize your view with graph options and table displays for deeper analysis. For a comprehensive evaluation, explore different cost types like unblended, amortized, net unblended, and net amortized.

Explore more of our Cost & Usage Explorer.

Hourly cloud insights preserve cost predictability

Understanding and leveraging hourly cost and usage data is paramount for any organization striving to excel in the cloud. This granular approach can impact your cloud cost management on a multitude of levels, businesses can identify inefficiencies, optimize resource allocation, and reduce waste, leading to substantial cost savings.

This level of detail really helps organizations tackle issues fast, cutting downtime and boosting system reliability. Cloud insights with Hourly Granularity can be a real time and money saver, and shouldn’t be treated as an added bonus on third-party cloud platforms.

That’s why at Anodot, we’re constantly evolving our Cost & Usage Explorer to meet the ongoing demands of MSPs and FinOps in the cloud. We understand the need to have the ability to understand your billing and our proud to launch our new GCP addition as as part of Cost & Usage Explorer and Assets tool with AWS right around the corner.

If you want accurate hourly granularity you need a reliable partner that’s always their in your cloud’s hour of need. That’s us. Let’s talk.