Cloud computing services offer great advantages to businesses but also present unique challenges related to cost and resource management. That's the message from a recent report that almost half of businesses struggle to control their cloud costs, while a similar proportion says they don't understand their cloud spending.

Moreover, the study revealed that many smaller companies are particularly vulnerable, with some saying they don't even know whether they are making or losing money on cloud services.

Businesses worldwide are starting to see the value of cloud computing, with more than three quarters using it or intending to in the future. But almost half (46%) struggle to control cloud costs, according to research by leading European hosting provider 2mdn, which surveyed 500 businesses across the UK, France, and Germany on their use of cloud technology.

There's also confusion about what cloud computing means, with 52% of survey respondents saying they are unsure about the differences between 'Cloud' and 'Hosted' services, despite 74% saying they have or plan to use hosted services in the future.

Almost half of the businesses monitored by Anodot (49%) are having trouble managing their cloud costs, and 54% of those organizations are primarily to blame for this cloud waste. While these statistics signify a cloud monitoring problem for these companies, it does not help with the continuing cloud migration issue as cloud computing has steadily increased and businesses still strive to find an economical way to run their organizations. 131 US-based IT directors and executives were interviewed for the report.

According to Anodot's State of Cloud Cost Report, companies greatly accelerated their transition to the cloud in response to the pandemic of 2021. The latest survey reveals that these companies continue to recognize the value of the cloud in agility and scalability. Eighty percent of respondents replied that their IT infrastructure was currently in the cloud. Sixty percent said they planned to migrate their workloads to the cloud in the coming year.

As companies continue to struggle with expensive monthly cloud fees - with cloud costs coming in as second only to payroll in terms of many - managing costs, reducing wasteful spending, and working on better visibility are at the top of the list. With the economy not growing, now is a very important time.

Some of these inflated cloud bill costs could have been avoided: 44% of respondents say that at least one-third (33%) of their cloud spend is wasted. In addition, getting visibility into cloud usage and costs was the top challenge reported by 53 percent of executives surveyed for controlling costs and reducing waste. Insufficient visibility into cloud usage makes it difficult for one-fifth (19%) of respondents to manage their cloud budget.

Consequently, the costs of using the cloud are becoming increasingly complicated to track and understand, leading to inappropriate resource expenditure: Forty-six percent of executives have reported that overprovisioning is a leading cause of wasteful spending on the cloud. In contrast, 45% have accused cloud assets' fragmentation across teams and vendors of perpetuating the problem.

David Drai, Anodot CEO, and co-founder, said: "Shifting to the cloud requires a delicate balance between the speed of workload migration and cost control.

"Today, cloud cost management – which is all the more crucial as businesses strive to mitigate wasted resources and shore up revenues – should be based on four key elements: visibility, insights, recommendations, and automated actions. Enterprises leveraging AI and ML to control and optimize their cloud environments are seeing immediate results and reduced waste, unlocking the true value the cloud has always promised."