Signs Your Azure Infrastructure Could Use an Optimization Strategy  

If you’re currently using or considering moving to Azure, you probably already know the potential it has to supercharge business outcomes. However, without a clear and carefully laid cloud strategy, Azure environments can easily start out on the wrong foot or get off track over time.  

Here are six signs it might be time to reevaluate your Azure workloads and adopt a formal strategy for getting them back into shape and keeping them optimized over time.  

1. Your Costs are Higher than Expected

Cloud costs can increase over time, especially if organizations do not actively manage and optimize their resources. In some cases, organizations may experience unexpected or unexplained cost increases. This could be due to changes in usage patterns, unintentional resource scaling, or misconfigurations. While cloud providers typically provide transparent pricing models, there also may be instances where certain costs are not immediately apparent or are overlooked. Examples include data transfer costs, premium support fees, or costs associated with specific services.  

When experiencing cost challenges, it’s often a signal that it’s time to optimize workloads. 

2. You are Only Using IaaS Workloads

A “lift and shift,” where businesses shift on-premises infrastructure to Infrastructure as a Service workloads in the cloud with little to no rearchitecting, is a common strategy and can be a great starting point in Azure. But as your cloud strategy matures, investigating ways to take advantage of more dynamic computing possibilities in the cloud should be near the top of your to-do list.  

You may have successfully migrated your processes and services to the cloud, but you probably still have some inefficiencies in your environment that are costing you more than they should. This is because the cloud has different features and benefits than on-premises infrastructure. For example, you may be paying for Windows or SQL licenses twice, or you may be running services on your own VMs that you could run for free with Azure’s Platform as a Service offerings. 

PaaS and serverless architectures can provide benefits such as automatic scaling, reduced operational overhead, and potentially lower costs compared to traditional IaaS approaches. If you haven’t embraced non-IaaS workloads, you’re likely missing out on serious benefits for both cost and performance that an Azure optimization strategy could help you capture.    

3. You do not Have a Clear Understanding of Security Responsibilities

One common fallacy of adopting cloud technology is assuming that the cloud provider becomes solely responsible for the security of your environment. While Microsoft provides key components of your security posture like patches and controls, you’re still responsible for installing the patches and configuring those components. There are also elements of your environment—like your information and data—where you’re solely responsible for the security and compliance.  

Even if you haven’t been assuming that Microsoft is taking the reins fully on the security front, you should know exactly what you’re responsible for and what you’ve configured in your Azure environment for Microsoft to handle. If these categories are fuzzy or you’re not sure where the transition takes place, this could be a sign that your security posture could use some optimization.  

4. You Have not Investigated new Azure Pricing Models and Offerings

Microsoft regularly introduces new solutions, features, and updates to improve and expand their cloud offerings and address evolving customer needs and technological advancements. Microsoft also introduces new pricing models or adjusts existing ones over time. This can be influenced by factors such as market dynamics, competitive considerations, and changes in the cost structure of providing cloud services.  

It’s important for organizations to stay informed about updates, assess new features, and consider potential optimizations or adjustments to their cloud deployments. Even if you were confident in your cloud strategy when you first set up your workloads, it’s likely that there are new options available for your environment now.  

5. Your Cloud Environment is Misaligned with your Business Objectives

If your cloud costs are not tied to your key performance indicators (KPIs) or business outcomes, you may be missing opportunities to optimize your cloud strategy. You should be able to track and measure how your cloud spending supports your business objectives and identify areas for improvement. Optimizing your workloads can help you align your costs with your value proposition and increase your return on investment (ROI). 

6. You Have Not Been Optimizing Your Environment

Cloud infrastructure and services take significantly less time to maintain than their on-premises counterparts, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in ongoing optimization. Even if your costs are lower than you were experiencing from your on-premises infrastructure or you feel more secure than ever, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t more opportunities for driving increased efficiencies. 

One key mistake we see with optimization efforts is that they often take the shape of a cloud engineer poking around here and here to spot any glaring errors. While ad-hoc checks are better than nothing, poking around a large environment enough to provide the same level of thoroughness as a data-driven strategy is likely to take your cloud engineers more hours than they have to spare. Then, they’ll have to carve out additional time to fix those problems. And on top of that, they’ll have to spend time researching new and developing best practices before checking again if there’s anything worth optimizing. With all these tasks, they might be running out of time in the day to keep up.  

Identifying and addressing issues without a systematic, data-driven strategy can be time-consuming and may not yield comprehensive results. If you don’t have a formalized optimization strategy, it’s likely that your optimization efforts could use some optimization if you’re going to drive meaningful differences in your environment.  

How to Get Started with an Azure Optimization Strategy

The best way to get started with an Azure Optimization strategy is to take advantage of well-established and thoroughly tested best practices to guide the way. Microsoft’s Well-Architected Framework for Azure can help you balance priorities and understand key optimization targets across five major categories in your architecture: performance, reliability, operational excellence, cost management, and security.  

If it feels overwhelming to understand Microsoft’s multi-point framework and apply it to your own environment, working with an experienced cloud consultant can help free you from analysis paralysis. Using advanced toolsets and expertise, they can make more specific and actionable recommendations. You’ll never be on your own to determine which optimization actions will drive you forward, and which might not be the best fit for your overall operational goals.