Have you ever got the bill after a meal and realised you accidentally bought a super-expensive bottle of wine?

It's not uncommon in life to be startled by a bill. Even cautious spenders can do it. But the bigger the investment, the more wary you have to be.

Even so, it's surprisingly common for businesses to migrate to the cloud and then wince when they see how much they're paying for it.

Why? It's partly because this technology is relatively new. It promises great things – and everyone's doing it. It could change the way you do business.

It's a bit like the early days of data roaming. There you are on holiday in Greece, calling your friends back home like there's no tomorrow. No more fumbling with drachmas in what you think is a phone box. Freedom. Excitement. And then a bill the length of an arthouse movie.

It's the same with the cloud. Too often, people embrace it as a solution without thoroughly costing it – or without taking steps to manage it prudently and efficiently.

Here at Ascend Cloud Solutions, we believe that moving apps, services and workloads to the cloud unlocks all sorts of opportunities for businesses.

But having managed over 400 migrations and counting, we also know that these benefits don't reap themselves. They have to be thoroughly planned, tested and executed – otherwise, you'll just get a bad case of cloud shock.

So don't rush into a migration project, flashing the green light before you've checked the traffic. Effective monitoring and management are your friends – and they're something that a cloud consultant can provide.

Spending money to save money

Cloud migration is a classic case of spending money to save money. But it's all too common for businesses to sign off on projects with a shrug that says, "Yes, this is expensive, but it'll probably pay off".

Fast-forward a couple of months and meetings are abuzz with cloud-based complaints. You've used a service for longer than you were meant to and are now paying for the excess.

Or you didn't check the SLA and are now watching downtime eat away at your productivity.

Or you're paying for a service that should have been decommissioned.

Or you're deploying services "just in case" or just because you can.

All of these scenarios are bad news for your budget. But it doesn't have to be this way – cloud shock is never an inevitability.

How can you avoid cloud shock?

A big part of avoiding cloud shock is being fully cognisant of your cloud infrastructure.

Obvious, right? Well, not necessarily. Businesses are complicated things. You wouldn't expect the HR manager of a transnational enterprise to know the name and favourite colour of every employee. Similarly, cloud infrastructures can sprawl, snowball and befuddle.

It's not uncommon, for instance, to simply forget to turn off a virtual server once you've migrated. Surely the provider will do that for you? The answer's not always "yes", so you can end up paying for a dead duck.

Another issue centres on role allocation. Who's in charge of what? Who's monitoring cloud usage? Who's in charge of deploying and deleting workloads?

In this context, it's hard to argue against the importance of clear roles. If everyone thinks someone else is responsible, you're more likely to wind up with a stonking great bill.

It's essential to have a clear budget right from the start – something that a cloud consultant can help you to create. You need to be consciously comparing usage and spend. If your monthly budget is nearly gone within a week, something has clearly gone very wrong – you need to stop, step back and reassess.

Do you know what services are being used? Do you know how much each SaaS app costs? Is there anything that can be cleared out to save money?

Are you on top of user accounts and subscriptions? Are you paying for obsolete accounts? Just as you might comb your bank account for direct debits you set up and forget about, so you need to be constantly tending to and pruning your cloud infrastructure.

Are you paying for more storage and compute than you actually need? If so, you might as well be throwing money into a ravine of your own making. Right-sizing your infrastructure is always a priority.

This is an area where automation can help. You could automate the creation and retirement of IaaS instances, to take one example. It's an easy way of cutting back on unnecessary spending.

Finally, there has to be monitoring in place in case of an outage, data breach or other disaster. You need to know that disaster recovery failover will be triggered – otherwise, you'll be paying to mop up an avoidable mess down the line.

It all boils down to monitoring and managing spend and usage. If you cut corners, you could be staring at your bill in cloud shock.

Work with a managed cloud service provider

One of the easiest ways to avoid cloud shock is to get a cloud consultant on board.

They will plan your migration so that it's fully in line with your business needs. That means making sure you're using the services and storage that you need and not a byte more. It also means executing the migration with minimal disruption to your business activities.

On top of that, a cloud consultant will bring expertise to the table which can be difficult to get in-house. No matter how brilliant your IT team, the recency of cloud tech means that know-how can be hard to come by.

The bottom line is that they cover the cloud and you get on with everything else – safe in the knowledge that your migration will be within budget and working in the interests of your business.

At Ascend Cloud Solutions, we're VMware and cloud computing experts. Interested in our cloud consultancy services? Don't hesitate to get in touch today.