Cloud Cost Optimization & Capacity Management

Abstract

Public cloud services have recently gained immense popularity. Public clouds offer several service model options that support varying business needs. Current and future technological trends and many technical benefits make cloud environments a great solution for organizations. However, alongside the increasing use of cloud services, cost related issues have become evident. Organizations from varying industries are facing higher costs than expected. Failing to take cost optimization and capacity management into consideration has resulted in rising costs. The objective of this thesis was to study how public cloud cost optimization and capacity management can form an effective business process that tackles the current cost related issues with cloud computing. This thesis was conducted as a qualitative case study for an international industrial company. The Process-Oriented Knowledge Management (PKM) framework was used to model the process and include pivotal cost optimization and capacity management activities. The result of this thesis is a business process that takes cost optimization and capacity management activities into account for IaaS and PaaS service models. The business process was created from a cloud consumer point of view and includes the planning and run phases of an applications cloud journey. Pivotal activities, instruments, tools, knowledge, roles and responsibilities were identified and included within and along the process to ensure the ongoing development and accuracy of cost optimization and capacity management in organizations.