As cloud adoption matures across Africa, organisations are discovering that simply migrating workloads is not enough to guarantee efficiency.
Without ongoing optimisation and cost management, cloud environments can quickly become oversized and unnecessarily expensive.
According to Lee Syse, director at Routed, now evoila Africa, the issue is not the cloud itself but how organisations manage their environments once workloads are deployed.
“Cloud platforms offer enormous flexibility, but that same flexibility can introduce inefficiencies if resources are not actively monitored and optimised,” says Syse. “Cost discipline in the cloud requires deliberate oversight, tooling and governance.”
Overprovisioning remains a common challenge
One of the most frequent drivers of cloud overspending is over-provisioned infrastructure.
When organisations initially deploy applications in the cloud, they often allocate additional capacity to accommodate peak demand or projected growth. However, these allocations are rarely reviewed once workloads stabilise.
“Initial cloud sizing almost always includes excess headroom,” Syse explains. “But unless teams conduct regular optimisation reviews, those systems remain larger than necessary even after applications become more efficient.”
Over time, this results in databases and applications consuming far more compute or storage resources than required, creating avoidable operational costs.
Regular right-sizing assessments, supported by built-in analytics or third-party optimisation tools, can help organisations align capacity with real-world usage and eliminate unnecessary expenditure.
Storage: the hardest cost to control
While compute resources can often be scaled down relatively easily, storage waste is far more difficult to address.
“Storage is typically the most stubborn source of cloud waste,” says Syse. “Backup volumes grow rapidly, retention policies are conservative, and organisations are understandably cautious about deleting data.”
As a result, backups for obsolete workloads often remain in place long after the applications themselves have been retired. These unused datasets continue to consume large volumes of storage capacity.
Cleaning up legacy storage environments requires careful analysis to avoid operational disruptions, but ignoring the issue can result in storage becoming one of the largest drivers of cloud spending.
“In many environments, storage growth quietly becomes the biggest cost pressure,” Syse adds. “That’s why it needs to be actively managed as part of a broader governance strategy.”
FinOps emerges as a critical discipline
Another growing challenge is visibility into cloud costs. Unlike traditional infrastructure procurement, cloud environments operate under a variety of billing models, from fixed subscriptions to usage-based consumption. This complexity makes financial oversight essential.
“Tracking cloud usage and spend requires dedicated attention,” says Syse. “Without someone responsible for monitoring costs, consumption can quickly spiral.”
Many organisations are therefore adopting a FinOps (financial operations) approach, which brings together finance and IT teams to manage cloud spending more effectively.
A FinOps function typically monitors usage patterns, analyses spending trends, identifies optimisation opportunities and enforces cost-control policies across the organisation.
“The FinOps role is important because it translates raw usage data into actionable cost management,” Syse explains. “Without accountability, inefficiencies can multiply quickly.”
Designing cloud environments for efficiency
Despite these challenges, cloud platforms offer significant opportunities for improving efficiency when designed correctly.
One key advantage is the availability of multiple performance tiers for compute, storage and networking.
“Cloud environments allow organisations to match resources to the specific needs of each application,” Syse says. “Not every workload requires high-performance infrastructure.”
This tiered architecture allows organisations to balance performance and cost by placing workloads in appropriate service tiers based on latency requirements, data volume or processing needs.
In contrast, traditional private infrastructure often requires upfront investments sized to accommodate long-term growth, frequently resulting in unused capacity.
“Cloud’s shared scale allows organisations to optimise costs far more effectively,” Syse adds. “But those efficiencies only emerge when environments are actively managed.”
Optimisation is an ongoing process
Syse emphasises that cloud efficiency does not happen automatically.
Organisations must continuously review workloads, storage policies and application architectures to ensure resources are being used effectively.
“Cloud gives organisations the tools to optimise performance and cost in ways that traditional infrastructure never could,” he concludes. “But the benefits only materialise when environments are actively managed and aligned with real usage patterns.”
As cloud adoption continues to accelerate across Africa, the ability to right-size infrastructure, manage storage growth and implement FinOps governance is likely to become a defining factor in controlling cloud costs while maintaining performance.