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What your IT and cloud provider is keeping from you – and what it costs you
You can't measure what you can't see. Let alone improve it.
That's exactly what your IT and cloud providers want.
That sounds rather sturdy, and I am, because I'm fed up with the consequences.
In IT, that means: what you don't measure costs you money. Often a lot of money.
IT optimization is not just a technical issue
Lower cloud or on-premise costs directly increase your gross margin.
Faster applications make your people more productive without them having to work harder.
Satisfied customers ensure more stable and higher turnover.
It sounds simple, but in practice many organizations get stuck here.
IT optimization is still too often seen as a technical issue for the IT department. In reality, it is a strategic business issue. If you ignore it, your company will pay a heavy price in terms of:
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Productivity
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Customer satisfaction
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Profit
To optimize, you need insight. Not only into where your IT is faltering, but also into the impact this has on your processes and your business results. The problem? The data that should provide that insight is often available, but it is fragmented, incomplete, and more often than not hidden. Hidden in reports that no one has time to read. In long overviews that the creator knows almost no one will read. And don't think this is "by accident.”
Do suppliers do that? Yes. They usually only provide the data that suits their interests.
The result is a blind spot for the organization. You think you know the whole picture, but in reality you are missing at least half of it. And that is precisely where the biggest gains lie.
Imagine: you increase the productivity of your people by tens of percent, without hiring extra staff. You halve your cloud or on-premise costs, without compromising on performance. In this blog, I'll show you why suppliers often don't give you enough insight, what information you do need to see the whole picture, and how you can translate that into direct profit for your company.
Because optimization doesn't start with technology. It starts with looking.
Cloud portals are designed to prevent you from gaining insight
That sounds unkind, and it is. Cloud portals give you a sea of data, disguised as information. You can see where your money is going, which services are running, and how your costs are developing. But what you don't see is just as important: what concrete benefits does that IT bring to your business? That is the information you need to be able to manage effectively.
Take an SQL Server in Azure.
If you want to map out its actual usage, you're in for a frustrating search. You have to go through at least 18 (!) different screens in the Azure Portal. On each screen, you have to reset the time span, manually select all relevant metrics, and save the graphs. And you have to do that for each screen separately. Only outside the portal can you assess them in context. For one server, this can easily take an hour. Microsoft knows this, of course. The more difficult optimization becomes, the longer you pay too much. Your loss is their gain. Unfortunately, that is their strategy.
Or take the “active” servers that we regularly encounter in practice. According to the cloud portal, they are happily running. In reality, they do nothing—except make a backup of themselves every day. Backups are useful, but not if there is nothing to back up. It only costs you money, without any value to your business.
On-premises does not provide better insights
“But Hugo, we're on-prem, that doesn't apply to us.” Sorry. This problem isn't limited to the cloud. On-premise isn't much better. Whether you use VMware or Hyper-V, the standard dashboards are designed to show technical status (data), not to provide business insight (information).
Without proper insight, you're optimizing blindly. You know what you're paying for, but not why. And you certainly don't know if it's delivering what you think it is. The real profit lies in the story behind the numbers. And you won't get that from your portal.
The costly illusion of FinOps insight
FinOps is often presented as the best way to get a handle on your cloud costs. And yes, it will show you where your money is going. But that's where it ends. What FinOps doesn't tell you is the reason behind the data. Why is that one server running when all it does is produce backups of itself? Why ... {another data example}.
What FinOps also doesn't tell you is what those expenses yield for your company. Or how well your employees are supported by the IT you pay for.
The problem lies in the focus.
FinOps is designed to force choices: focus on either costs, efficiency, or quality. As if you have to choose. Choosing means that improving one always comes at the expense of the other. That's nonsense.
With tight, good/healthy optimization, you can of course have all three: low costs, high efficiency, and excellent quality. It just requires you to look beyond the standard FinOps reports. To measure what's really happening under the hood, both technically and operationally.
You may be wondering why cloud providers and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) stick to that old story. Simple: because it's good for their revenue.
If they can convince you that you have to choose, you will continue to pay too much for inefficient solutions. You will continue to run capacity that adds no value. You will be the one who accepts slow applications and unnecessary complexity.
But that is turning reality on its head.
Let's reverse that. With sharp insight and the accompanying optimization, you can turn that around. You eliminate waste from your IT, increase the productivity of your employees, and improve the experience of your customers. All at a lower cost.
FinOps can be a starting point. But it is not an end point. If you really want to get a grip on costs, efficiency, and quality, you need more than what the standard dashboards show you. You need insight into the importance of your interests, your optimization, and your gross margin.
From technical data to hard cash
Ready for real optimization? Like many other companies, do you want to optimize and get a return on your investment? You're right!
Real optimization starts with real insight. Not with rows of technical graphs that only an IT department can wade through, but with a clear overview that immediately shows what your IT does for your business and what it doesn't.
That starts with making the actual use of your systems visible. Not how many servers are running, but how much value they deliver. How many processes they support. And above all: whether they help your employees work faster, with fewer errors, and with less frustration. Because that's where the real business impact lies.
Our work revolves around three questions that our customers can now always answer:
- What is being used?
- What are the benefits for our organization?
- How well does it support my people in their work?
Believe me, because they have clear answers to these three crucial questions, they can optimize in a targeted manner:
They actively reduce their costs
They easily increase their productivity
They improve quality on a daily basis
Not either/or, but both/and.
How did they do that? In the cloud, they gain that insight with our Cloud Cost Audit™ and Cloud Cost Optimizer™. On-premise, we do that with our Application Health Check™ and Application Optimizer™. These tools not only display technical data, but also translate it into clear, business-oriented information. That is real value.
Would you like to know how they went from cost items to optimization?
It started with an initial appointment, with no strings attached. Because, let's be honest, there was a bit of skepticism. From everyone. Is that really possible? Sounds good, Hugo, come over for coffee sometime. They made that first no-obligation appointment, which meant immediately taking the first steps toward an IT environment that performs better and at lower costs. One that directly contributes to the company and its results.
Make that appointment too. It's free, no strings attached, and guaranteed to make you happy.
See you soon!