With larger portions of IT budgets being consumed by cloud, there’s a greater imperative to understand the nature of price, value and availability of cloud services. Since its inception in 2015, the Cloud Price Index (CPI) has tracked the current state of cloud services across the globe. New data tools have made it even more valuable and analyst Gabriella Brown joins host Eric Hanselman to explore how clients are putting it to work and the trends that are shaping the changes taking place. Using a basket of goods model and scanning of millions of offered services, the CPI normalizes cloud capabilities, allowing comparisons between providers and regions.

The FinOps movement is bringing new rigor to managing cloud costs and building capabilities to plan more strategically. With a greater focus on sustainability, the CPI can target green and low carbon regions for workload deployment. It also tracks trends, like the reduction and, in some cases, elimination of discounts on new instance types. While they can offer better value in price for performance, it’s an indication that cloud providers may be looking at more margin retention in their offerings, as they adapt their supporting infrastructure to deal with demand from AI. 

Host: Eric Hanselman

Guest: Gabriella Brown

Links to show content: 451 Research