H.L. Mencken once famously wrote, “…there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” More than just a pithy way to frame the entire concept of “cost containment” (whether network-specific cost, the broader category of IT, or the cost of anything else, to be quite honest), it’s an integral aspect of what I’ll be proposing in this and subsequent articles in this series.

There’s no question that the cloud offers efficiencies and innovation opportunities that are near impossible to replicate on-premise. In fact, Amazon reports that companies achieve 31% infrastructure cost savings, as well as 62% more efficient IT infrastructure management, when they move to AWS (and that doesn’t include the many other cost benefits — like improved security and on-demand services). But the extent of those efficiencies can vary.

A common misconception around cloud computing is that it’s automatically cheaper than running an on-premise infrastructure. Unfortunately, when businesses switch to (or consider switching to) the cloud, their cloud savings may not be immediately evident. In fact, some businesses accrue more monthly costs with the on-demand cloud model than they would with on-premise systems. This begs the question: Is cloud computing really cost-effective?

Businesses are always looking for ways to increase efficiency and eliminate waste. For software-driven companies, DevOps is one approach that helps to achieve this. The goal of DevOps is faster software delivery to the end-user while maintaining high software quality. DevOps enhances collaboration between operations and development teams for faster code deployment. When evaluating the effectiveness of your DevOps model, it is critical to use metrics relevant to your organization.

CloudZero is a platform that helps you understand cost — but that doesn't mean it's purely a finance tool. In fact, unlike most other cloud cost management and optimization solutions, it’s built for engineering. However, CloudZero still makes a lot of finance teams very happy. First of all, the work that engineering teams do while using CloudZero saves money, which every finance team appreciates.

It’s no secret that AWS bills are confusing. But it’s particularly difficult for the team who actually writes the check to Amazon for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars — yet has never personally seen what the inside of the AWS portal looks like (and probably never will).

CloudZero is a cloud cost intelligence solution that puts engineering in control of cloud cost. We set out to disrupt the cost management and optimization space by building a solution that was designed around the way engineers work — so cost becomes a tradeoff during the software development process, rather than a massive disruption. We often get asked what actually makes us such an engineering-friendly solution? Well, here are seven reasons why engineering and DevOps teams love CloudZero.

Technical debt is an important — but often unclear — concept for engineering teams. In software development, technical debt, also called code debt or tech debt, is defined as the cost of refactoring a piece of code or system to keep it working efficiently. It can be caused by outdated architecture, a change in requirements, or the result of choosing an easier solution instead of a better, but more difficult one.