{"id":15566,"date":"2022-02-17T16:15:42","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T16:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/cloud-waste\/"},"modified":"2022-02-17T16:25:17","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T16:25:17","slug":"cloud-waste","status":"publish","type":"definition","link":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/34701\/cloud-waste","title":{"rendered":"Cloud Waste"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span id=\"what_does_cloud_waste_mean\">What Does Cloud Waste Mean?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Cloud waste is what happens when cloud services remain unused or underused. Cloud waste is becoming an important concern for companies that lease software-as-a-service (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/155\/software-as-a-service-saas\">SaaS<\/a>), platform-as-a-service (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/147\/platform-as-a-service-paas\">PaaS<\/a>) and infrastructure-as-a-service (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/141\/infrastructure-as-a-service-iaas\">IaaS<\/a>) cloud services from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/26735\/public-cloud\">public cloud<\/a> providers.<\/p>\n<p>Cloud waste often occurs when employees overestimate what services will be required to support a specific business goal. In a large corporation, when multiple business divisions use their own budgets to purchase cloud services, it&rsquo;s easy for cloud waste to go unnoticed. The IT research firm Gartner estimates that in 2021, cloud waste cost businesses <a href=\"https:\/\/www.business2community.com\/cloud-computing\/overprovisioning-always-on-resources-lead-to-26-6-billion-in-public-cloud-waste-expected-in-2021-02381033\" target=\"_blank\">approximately $26.6 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Cloud waste is often the result of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Overprovisioning.<\/li>\n<li>Purchasing services for a longer time period than actually needed.<\/li>\n<li>Duplicate purchases within the same organization for similar types of cloud services.<\/li>\n<li>Failing to deprovision orphan resources.<\/li>\n<li>Inadequate focus on cloud maintenance and cloud optimization.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/34580\/saas-sprawl-software-as-a-service-sprawl\">SaaS sprawl<\/a> and other types of cloud waste can be a labor-intensive burden as well as a financial one. Setting up automation capabilities to relieve <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/13607\/devops\">DevOps<\/a> teams from manually identifying waste can ensure this type of maintenance task is taken care of more efficiently, thoroughly and with greater accuracy.<\/p>\n<h2><span id=\"techopedia_explains_cloud_waste\">Techopedia Explains Cloud Waste<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>There are many stakeholders that should be concerned about cloud waste: FinOps and Finance departments are generally more inclined to try and get these costs under control and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/30468\/cloud-operations-management-cloudops-cloud-operations\">cloud engineers<\/a> are often the ones tasked with managing the process.<\/p>\n<p>User-defined cost allocation <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/5240\/tag-metadata\">tagging<\/a> can help teams map cloud costs directly to an application or other cloud resource according to particular features, products, teams or individuals. This way, those responsible for creating a particular resource are also accountable to rightsize them when they are overprovisioned or turn them off when they&rsquo;re unused.<\/p>\n<p>Getting visibility into usage is another key component for managing waste. The majority of cloud providers have their own tools that give a thorough analysis of resources running in a particular environment as well as actual usage. By taking advantage of these tools, teams can understand what adjustments they need to make to their resources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Does Cloud Waste Mean? Cloud waste is what happens when cloud services remain unused or underused. Cloud waste is becoming an important concern for companies that lease software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud services from public cloud providers. Cloud waste often occurs when employees overestimate what services will be required to support [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7813,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"definitioncat":[231,215,240],"class_list":["post-15566","definition","type-definition","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","definitioncat-it-business-alignment","definitioncat-cloud-computing","definitioncat-cloud-service-providers"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.8 (Yoast SEO v23.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What is Cloud Waste? - Definition from Techopedia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This definition explains the meaning of Cloud Waste and how it can negatively impact budget.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/34701\/cloud-waste\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cloud Waste\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This definition explains the meaning of Cloud Waste and how it can negatively impact budget.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/34701\/cloud-waste\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Techopedia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/techopedia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-02-17T16:25:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@techopedia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/34701\/cloud-waste#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/34701\/cloud-waste\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Margaret Rouse\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f5dd538e31ee352d105b8af36c4268a5\"},\"headline\":\"Cloud Waste\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-02-17T16:15:42+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-02-17T16:25:17+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/34701\/cloud-waste\"},\"wordCount\":345,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/#organization\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/34701\/cloud-waste#respond\"]}],\"articleSection\":\"\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/34701\/cloud-waste\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/34701\/cloud-waste\",\"name\":\"What is Cloud Waste? 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