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With $39.5 billion projected to have been spent on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) last year, many cloud users will find it’s time to optimize spend with an IaaS cost management tool. With so many different options to choose from, picking the right one can be overwhelming. While evaluating your options, you should have an idea of what would be most compatible for you and your organization. In order to cut cloud costs and waste, make sure you look for these five things while picking an IaaS cost management tool.

1. UI is Easy to Understand

When adopting a new piece of software, you should not be stressed out trying to figure out how it works. It should be designed around end users in order to give them easy experiences so they can accomplish tasks quickly. Many native tools required by the cloud providers demand specialized coding knowledge that the IaaS users in your organization may not have. Whether the software is useful or not depends on how simple and easy it is to follow so that every cloud user can contribute to the task of managing IaaS cost.  

2. Improves Visibility

It is essential that you have all of your information available to you in one place – this helps make sure you didn’t overlook anything. Seeing all your resources on one screen, all at once, will allow you to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses you need to focus on to help manage your IaaS cost. Of course, cost management includes more than visibility, which leads to the next points.

3. Provides Reporting

You want your organization to be well informed, so it is important that any IaaS cost management tool you adopt includes the ability to generate cost and savings reports. You can’t change something if you don’t know what it means; the data gathered – past and present – will help you understand the past and make a forecast for the future. These reports will give you the information you need to make quick, informed decisions. Preferably, they contain automated recommendations based on your resource utilization history and patterns. Additionally, it’s important for any cost optimization tool to report on the amount of money you have saved using it, so you can justify the cost of the tool as needed to your management or finance department.

4. Implements Actions

After gathering the data and making suggestions, the next step in cost optimization is to actually make these changes. Using the reports and data gathered, the tool should be able to manage your resources and implement any necessary changes without your having to do anything.  

5.  Automation and APIs

Even though it goes on in the background, APIs are necessary because they allow your tool to work in conjunction with other operations. With the support of inbound actions and outbound notifications, this automated process allows you to streamline all of your data. This will make things faster and more efficient, allowing you to cut down on time and IaaS cost. Highlights to look for include Single Sign-On, ChatOps integrations, and a well-documented API.

Keep Your Organization’s IaaS Needs in Mind

These are just a few of the things you should be looking for when searching for IaaS cost optimization, but you have to find the platform that works best for you!