Amidst the recent dawn of the digital age, burgeoning with cutting-edge technology, cloud computing has risen to new heights, giving enterprises the capability to scale and adapt at enhanced speeds, accelerate innovation, drive business agility, streamline operations, and reduce costs. Spending on public cloud services worldwide has grown by nearly 21.7 percent in 2023, with the market value expected to be USD 597.3 billion by the end of the year.

Unfortunately, as advantageous as cloud computing can be for businesses of all sizes in nearly all sectors and verticals, the technology is not without its drawbacks; the most common obstacle enterprises face with the cloud is inefficient allocation of resources and spending. According to some estimates, up to 35 percent of cloud spending can be labeled as wasteful, putting 126.77 billion worldwide cloud expenditures under the category of inefficient spending.

Statistics like these have pushed organizations to prioritize the optimization of their cloud expenditures, with the most notable path to a more efficient cloud often coming through a partnership with a managed service provider (MSP). According to the 2022 Cloud Infrastructure Report, 71 percent of respondents said that they rely on an MSP for some portion of their cloud operations.

This continuous rise in clientele cloud demands has urged MSPs to enhance their cloud capabilities and offerings, with the most prominent way currently for MSPs to go about this is through the use of cloud optimization/management platforms. These are suites of software tools that enterprises and MSPs use to manage and optimize their cloud resources, providing users with tools that allow them to exercise administrative control over private, public, and hybrid clouds.

These platforms provide a single view across multiple clouds with data on cost, power consumption, and overall optimization, which allows MSPs to ensure customer cloud assets are being adequately tracked with automated management and scheduling across all cloud environments. However, apart from the financial and efficiency benefits of these platforms, an often overlooked aspect of cloud optimization is the positive impact it can have on the environment.

Cloud Optimization for a Greener Planet

While many companies don’t realize how eco-beneficial cloud optimization can be, as it often contributes less directly to their bottom line, sustainability advantages can be pivotal for enterprises, not only to create a better world for future generations but also due to the rise of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards.

ESG in the private sector is a set of criteria used to evaluate a company’s risks and practices, and are important to sustainable investing as socially conscious investors and stakeholders, including employees, board members, customers, regulators, suppliers, and distributors, want to know a company’s stance on socioeconomic factors and its sustainability efforts before investing.

This is where MSPs and cloud optimization come into play for enterprises looking to reach their desired levels of ESG standards, allowing companies to reduce their carbon footprint. For example, simply transitioning to cloud computing can already help a company reduce its carbon emissions by up to 30 percent for large companies and up to a staggering 90 percent for small and medium businesses (SMBs). But, when optimized through a cloud management platform, these numbers can skyrocket all the way to a total of 1.6 billion metric tons of GHG emissions, possibly being saved across the world.

Furthermore, virtualization via cloud optimization can allow organizations to create several virtual machines (VMs) and run multiple applications on the same physical server via a hypervisor. Organizations can then use a single VM rather than a resource-heavy physical server, which uses less power and has a lower impact on the environment. This means an enterprise can reduce its carbon emissions and energy use while also enhancing the efficiency of multiple facets within the organization.

Finally, with the growing global demand for energy, businesses would be wise to optimize their clouds to decrease their overall energy needs. The International Energy Agency revealed that global data center energy consumption increased by 45 percent over the past three years, reaching 264 terawatt-hours per year. Thankfully, through cloud optimization, an enterprise can reduce energy consumption by over 30 percent, which, when compounded with the total amount of businesses nowadays, can make a drastic impact.

Kalibr8’s Part for a Cleaner Planet

At Kalibr8, we understand the need to improve sustainability around the globe. There shouldn’t be a single organization or consumers who don’t want to undo the damage already done to our planet and create a better, more sustainable world for future generations. This is why we set out to help MSPs in their journey to improve cloud optimization for enterprises in a myriad of industries.

This is why Kalibr8 provides an automated cloud optimization & cost management platform with an intuitive and efficient “single pane of glass” view into all aspects that impact getting the most value for the least cost.

Our platform can help businesses build, view, and understand over time of VM costs vs. specifications and requirements against each VM’s intended use with the Kalibr8 platform. The platform allows enterprises to control their cloud costs through automated capabilities that help them identify unmanaged resources, accurately allocate costs, and even implement effective governance.

On top of this, our platform is built specifically for MSPs, securely managing Microsoft Azure assets with the goal of improving the economics and ROI. Our platform can help MSPs understand a VM’s usage pattern and make more accurate decisions as to when each scaling or schedule group is needed to be available to users, as well as easily see savings from scheduling & scaling VMs and cost usage in dollars and cents over the defined billing period, reducing their customers and their own expenses, and helping to reduce overall energy use and carbon emissions.

With legal frameworks already in place to create a more sustainable digital age, such as the Paris Agreement, the Clean Air Act, and the Energy Policy Act, among others, Kalibr8 is setting out to help MSPs and enterprises alike meet the regulations being put in place. By working with Kalibr8 and leveraging our Kalibr8 cloud optimization platform, our MSP partners can work with their customers to optimize their cloud spending and efficiency, creating benefits for themselves and the world around them.