Use Only What We Need but Scale as Needed

Using only what we need is the most obvious way to save money on AWS. However, it's surprising how many companies end up using way more than they require. This “buy big and grow into it” mindset can be due to a variety of reasons. It might take a while to get out of it because that was the IT way for many years. This is perfectly normal, but will hopefully fade as people become more confident in the flexibility and versatility the cloud offers.

Set up cost control from the start

The first step in spending only what we need is truly knowing what we’re spending and what we're spending it on. One thing that many companies forget in their quest to launch their cloud landscapes is to set up some proper monitoring and control mechanisms. Granted, when we’re first learning about the cloud, we probably don’t need to be too concerned with cost because our workload is likely small.

However, one of the blessings of the cloud that is also a curse is that some of those small experimental projects can quickly scale to production-size capacity with a few mouse clicks. This isn’t always a linear scale in terms of price, either.