The Rise, Inevitability, and Dangers of Cloud Sprawl
Why does cloud sprawl happen and how can we control it?
First, what is cloud sprawl?
Cloud sprawl is the lack of controls against the expansion of an organization’s cloud instances, services or providers.
What are the dangers?
While instances and services are managed differently than providers, the lack of effective controls on any of these is a cause of concern for organizations.
A lack of visibility and control around the volume and types of instances and services offered by a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) is dangerous from a cost perspective as any unnecessary or untracked usage that is not contained can pose a serious financial burden. In addition to the financial aspect, if an organization is using a variety of different services and instance configurations that also may lack the knowledge or controls to ensure that all of these resources are being used safely and effectively.
On the other side, cloud sprawl as it concerns providers can be even more difficult to manage. This can take the form of sprawl across a number of CSPs, a large number of accounts within a single CSP, the usage of…
