Save cloud money #1 Credits
We are beginning to publish advice that will help save and optimize the cloud costs. Сloud providers play an important role in foundation of startups and transformation of big corporation. Cloud business has become more important in the structure of Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba. For example in Amazon annual report,
Alexa mention only 16 times, comparing to AWS 96 times
Before starting cloud journey, have a look at how you or your company can get credits. Credits for cloud resource can be different in each public cloud providers, however all these credits can help you to save some costs at the initial stages.
Credits
- Student and Research
If you are studying, you can apply for special program from cloud providers. This programs helps students who study to learn more about cloud technologies and apply knowledge practically on different projects. The programs usually contain educational materials and accounts for trainers. These are some of the students programs: AWS , Azure , Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud.
For research proposes, cloud providers have a separate students program and grant programs. The process of obtaining a grant begins with completing an application with detailed requirements, which are described on the project website — Azure for Research, AWS Cloud Credits for Research , GCP research credits. In short, the application should be in free form, it should describe the problem that researchers are working on, and why it is important. In addition, the required resources must be described. At the same time, do not be shy and ask for less than necessary — the grant size is large, and, as it is written on the site in the FAQ section, a request for 100 TB of storage and 10 servers is acceptable.
- Startup
This is the most well known credits program, most of cloud providers have startup program to help start and accelerate business. In the case studies you can see unicorn size companies which start from startup cloud grants. This help a lot when you have just an idea and passion to make it. Some of these programms include: Alibaba Cloud for Startups , Azure for Startups, GCP for Startups, AWS for Startups, Oracle for Startups.
However, this is not the end for startups, if you are part of partners accelerators, cloud providers can can give you bigger credits. This includes startups which are participating in acceleration program like Y Combinator, 500 startups, Betarton and etc.
- Proof-of-Concept (POC)
If you want to test new instance or feature of cloud provider, you can request this from your account manager, however, this depends from you current spendings and how much cloud resources your POC will be required. This type of credits usually are given for several month and is a good way to save cost whilst trying something new.
These are several ways to get credits and save some costs. In the same time you can keep track of your expenses as well as spend credits wisely. HPCD Lab can help to track and optimize cloud costs.
About HPCD Lab
HPCD Lab ( https://hpcdlab.com ) is a multi-cloud SaaS platform which helps companies save money on their cloud usage (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud). The platform analyzes your bills and cloud infrastructure usage after which’s it’s machine learning system automatically prepares recommendations for your engineers and managers.
