CloudCostChefs Weekly – Issue #01, July 26, 2025

📊 60-Second Cloud Bites

Enterprise Cloud Waste Hits Record $44.5 Billion in 2025 - Companies are burning through billions on unused cloud resources as global cloud spending crosses $723 billion, with most waste coming from idle instances and oversized services. Source: MILL5

84% of Organizations Struggle with Cloud Cost Control - New Flexera data shows companies exceeded their cloud budgets by an average of 15% in 2025, with 91% acknowledging measurable waste in their cloud spending. Source: Reform

Cribl Launches FinOps Center for Data Cost Visibility - The new capability in Cribl.Cloud helps enterprises connect data usage to business impact, addressing the growing challenge of managing AI and analytics workload costs. Source: Cribl

🍳 Chef's Feature Recipe

Cut AWS Costs by 70% with Smart Spot Instances

Your EC2 instances are eating your budget alive. On-demand pricing feels like paying full price for a hotel room when you could get the same room for 30% of the cost.

Solution: Set up Spot Instances with Auto Scaling fallback protection. You get massive savings (up to 90% off) while keeping your apps running smoothly.

Step 1: Create a Launch Template

bash
aws ec2 create-launch-template \
  --launch-template-name "cost-saver-template" \
  --launch-template-data '{
    "ImageId": "ami-0abcdef1234567890",
    "InstanceType": "t3.medium",
    "SecurityGroupIds": ["sg-12345678"]
  }'

Step 2: Set Up Mixed Instance Auto Scaling Group

bash
aws autoscaling create-auto-scaling-group \
  --auto-scaling-group-name "smart-cost-asg" \
  --min-size 1 --max-size 5 --desired-capacity 2 \
  --mixed-instances-policy '{
    "InstancesDistribution": {
      "OnDemandPercentage": 20,
      "SpotAllocationStrategy": "diversified"
    }
  }'

Step 3: Monitor Your Setup

bash
aws autoscaling describe-auto-scaling-groups \
  --auto-scaling-group-names "smart-cost-asg"

Expected Savings: 80% of your instances run on Spot pricing (70-90% cheaper), 20% stay on-demand for reliability. Real example: $100/month becomes $25/month for the same compute power. Savings start within hours.

🛠️ Tool of the Week

Komiser - Open-source cloud cost inspector that works across AWS, Azure, and GCP.

What it does: Builds a complete inventory of your cloud resources, identifies idle and underutilized assets, and shows you exactly where your money goes. The resource dependency graph even helps spot security risks.

Why SMBs love it: Free forever, no vendor lock-in, and you can customize it to fit your specific needs. Perfect for companies that want enterprise-grade visibility without enterprise prices.

Quick start: git clone https://github.com/mlabouardy/komiser && docker-compose up

Link: github.com/mlabouardy/komiser

📈 FinOps Factoid

27-32% of enterprise cloud budgets are wasted on unused instances, idle environments, and oversized services, according to recent industry analysis. For a company spending $10,000/month, that's $2,700-$3,200 going straight down the drain. Source: Reform

❓ Reader Q&A

Question: "We're a 50-person startup spending $3,000/month on AWS. Our bill keeps growing but we're not sure where the money goes. What's the first thing we should do?"

Answer: Start with AWS Cost Explorer (it's free!) to see your spending by service and time period. Look for your top 3 cost drivers - usually EC2, RDS, and data transfer. Set up billing alerts at $2,500 and $3,500 so you get warnings before overspending. Most startups find 20-30% savings just by rightsizing oversized instances and turning off dev environments overnight.

Next step: Tag everything with "Environment" (prod/dev/test) so you can track what's actually driving business value.

📅 Events & Resources

FinOps for Data Clouds: Virtual Summit - August 14, 8:00 AM PT. FinOps Foundation's free virtual event covering AI workload optimization, data cloud pricing models, and FOCUS 1.3 preview. Includes live Q&A and networking. Register here

FinOps & Bourbon: Cloud Cost Accountability - August 14, 1:00-2:00 PM EST. CleanSlate Technology Group hosts an interactive session on FinOps fundamentals with IBM Cloudability insights. Optional whiskey tasting included (bottle shipped to attendees). Register here

🎯 Kitchen-Sink Call-To-Action

Take Our FinOps Kitchen Assessment - Discover where your organization stands with our chef-inspired, interactive assessment that evaluates your FinOps maturity. Get personalized recommendations to optimize your cloud costs without enterprise complexity. Takes 5 minutes, could save thousands. Start your assessment here