Fifty-five per cent of finance and tech leaders admit there is a transparency and knowledge gap that threatens the potential of cloud investments and could hold back innovation. Meanwhile, 25 per cent say that finance staff want to reduce cloud spending but they don’t have the tech or engineering resources to prioritise this.
This data comes from Vertice, the optimisation platform for SaaS and cloud spend, which has released its global survey, ‘The State of Cloud Cost Optimisation‘, revealing how organisations are being held back from controlling their cloud spending and gaining ROI due to a lack of alignment between finance and tech leaders.
With cloud costs currently rising by an average of 35 per cent year on year, Vertice surveyed 600 senior finance and tech leaders in the US and UK. The optimisation platform found that cutting cloud spending was the highest priority for finance leaders, with 78 per cent listing it among their top three cost-saving priorities and 33.5 per cent revealing it as their number one priority.
Only nine per cent of technical leaders say reducing cloud costs is a top concern; while four out of 10 say their priority is hiring skilled cloud employees.
Overall, 55 per cent of finance leaders blame a lack of transparency from tech leaders, with 44 per cent saying they can’t get visibility of cloud costs. Adding to this misalignment, relationships with cloud hosting providers are highlighted as a major threat to cost efficiency, with 39 per cent of finance leaders finding it difficult to negotiate costs because technical staff own relationships with cloud vendors.
Worryingly, 55 per cent of tech leaders say non-technical staff lack the knowledge or expertise to understand cloud infrastructure configurations. Twenty-five per cent of tech bosses say that finance staff want to reduce cloud spending, but they don’t have the tech or engineering resources to focus on cloud optimisation.
Empowering businesses to cut cloud spend
To help organisations tackle the challenge of spiralling cloud spending, Vertice has launched its new Cloud Cost Optimization platform. The offering hopes to empower businesses to cut cloud spend by as much as 25 per cent. Vertice designed the platform to solve the acute problems faced by finance and tech leaders trying to reduce cloud spend.
Eldar Tuvey, CEO and co-founder of Vertice said: “Reducing cloud spending is a growing challenge for businesses of all sizes, so it’s concerning to see the disconnect between finance and tech leaders.
“With companies grappling with volatile cloud bills and costs rising by as much as 500 per cent in a single year for some organisations, it’s critical for CFOs and CIOs to have a unified strategy for cloud cost optimisation. CFOs are demanding access to accurate forecasting, with shared visibility and automation tools to help them act on cost-saving initiatives. This is of course critical for all companies who are struggling to scale their cloud efficiently, as they grow.
“There are over 200 AWS products alone, which makes managing and reducing cloud spending complex and time-consuming. Automating cloud cost optimisation leads to bigger savings of time and money, and frees up resources for growth and innovation.”
