Are you spending too much in the cloud? Many business leaders feel they are overpaying as they move their data and apps into the cloud. According to a pair of studies released this week, excessive data egress fees are particularly damaging to cloud happiness, while orphaned cloud processing capacity is a tough nut to crack.
After leveling off a tad in 2024, public cloud spending is projected to continue its relentless upward pace this year, rising to $723.4 billion, or 21.4% increase over 2024 figures, according to Statista. AWS continues to dominate the space, with about a 31% share in Q3 2024, followed by Microsoft Azure at 20% and Google Cloud at 12%. The remainder is split up among Alibaba Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and IBM Cloud.
While cloud is still growing, everything is not hunky dory. For starters, cloud budgets are being exceeded on a regular basis. according to Wasabi Technologies’ Global Cloud Storage Index, the percentage of organizations where cloud storage spending exceeded the budget rose from 53% in 2023 to 62% in 2024.
(Source: Statista)
Wasabi’s new report, which is based on a survey of 1,600 decision-makers and conducted by Vanson Bourne, also found that additional storage fees, such as data egress, data access, networking, and API calls, amounted to 49% of an average user’s cloud storage bill. Those fees lead directly to IT or business delays for 56% of businesses, according to the survey.
Once organizations start migrating applications and data to the cloud, 42% say they migrate more than they initially intended, according to Wasabi’s survey. That situation directly leads to higher operating costs for 39% of those surveyed, the company says.
“Unfortunately, cloud storage remains an unpredictable expense for many organizations, and fees associated with moving and accessing stored data only exacerbate the nature of this unpredictability, ultimately stalling business initiatives and slowing innovation,” Andrew Smith, Wasabi’s director of strategy and market intelligence, said in a press release.
Despite the expense of cloud storage, 89% of users surveyed say they are “satisfied” or “completely satisfied,” and only a handful say they are dissatisfied. One bright spot is the security of object storage in the cloud, which nearly all (99%) of Wasabi survey-takers say they’re happy with.
It will be important for businesses to rein in this excessive spending as they move more data into the cloud, particularly as they embark upon new tech initiatives like AI, Smith says. “Controlling costs associated with these new workloads will be critical to long-term business success, and legacy fee structures and billing models will only slow progress and punish innovators,” he says.
Source: Wasabi Technologies’ Global Cloud Storage Index
Meanwhile, the potential for stranded assets in the cloud is rising. According to Harness’ new FinOps in Focus 2025 report, which is based on a survey of 700 business leaders, a majority of users lack full visibility into their cloud environments, with only 43% having full visibility into “idle cloud resources.”
“Without visibility into the impact of their spending or incentives to optimize, developers default to over-provisioning to ensure performance—treating cloud instances as an infinite resource rather than a finite business investment,” says Harness, which sells FinOps tools for the cloud.
Once a company starts looking for under-utilized cloud environments, it can take quite a long time to identify them and take action. According to Harness, 86% of developers say it takes at least a week to spot idle, orphaned, or unused cloud resources and take action to shut them down, while it takes 80% to do the same for overprovisioned cloud resources.
“Cloud infrastructure spend is one of the biggest line items for modern enterprises, right behind salary. Leadership teams should ask themselves if they are comfortable relying on guesswork to manage and optimize this spend,” Harness CFO John Bonney says in a press release. “With a lack of visibility into cloud costs and constantly shifting requirements for workloads, needless inefficiencies and over-commitments are eating up resources and holding firms back when they are under pressure to do more with less.”
Source: Harness FinOps in Focus 2025 report
Not surprisingly, Harness says most organizations are failing to set up fundamental cloud cost optimization best practices. The company found that 71% of developers do not carry out “spot orchestration”; 61% do not “rightsize instances”; 58% do not use reserved instances or savings plans; and 48% do not track and shut down idle resources.
Cost optimization isn’t a priority, but it should be, according Harness. “Cloud efficiency isn’t just a numbers game–it’s about creating a culture of cost awareness where enterprises shift their FinOps practices left, helping engineers understand how their architectural choices directly impact both performance and financial outcomes,” says Ravi Yadalam, senior director of product management at Harness. “Developers must become equal partners in their cloud cost management strategy, gaining full visibility into spend before deployment to identify cloud waste and automatically eliminate it.”
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