Cloud data costs have a way of creeping up on you. I've helped multiple companies reduce their cloud data spending by 30-50% without sacrificing capability.
The Usual Suspects
Storage - Data at rest, often growing faster than expected.
Compute - Processing power for transformations and queries.
Data transfer - Moving data between services and regions.
Unused resources - Development environments left running.
Quick Wins (Week 1)
Kill the zombies - Look for resources that are running but unused.
Right-size your instances - Most resources are over-provisioned.
Use spot/preemptible instances - 60-90% savings for fault-tolerant batch workloads.
Medium-Term Optimizations
Implement data lifecycle policies - Hot, warm, and cold storage tiers.
Optimize your queries - Avoid SELECT *, use appropriate partitioning.
Reserved capacity - 30-60% savings on predictable baseline usage.
Maintaining the Gains
Monthly cost reviews, alerts for unusual spending, cost allocation to teams, and approval processes for expensive resources.