Cloud computing has won converts for its promise of cutting down costs, but large financial institutions need to be pragmatic to avoid spiraling expenses, especially as budgets constrict into 2023. 

As purse strings continue to tighten heading into the new year, all major expenses should receive scrutiny, including the cloud. While cloud computing does help big financial institutions reduce costs over on-premise data centers, the pay-as-you-go subscription model for cloud services can also lead to unexpectedly high bills if technology executives aren’t careful.  

For example, IT executives told Gartner that cost control is one of the most frustrating challenges of the cloud, according to a recent Insider feature.  

Here are some of the ways that big financial firms are keeping public cloud expenses in check, according to tech execs that spoke to Insider: 

• Wells Fargo holds daily meetings to review a detailed dashboard that showcases expense trends and identifies anomalies, which helps the team determine if there are workloads that can be paused during off-hours.  
• Capital One uses a tool that automatically moves less-used data into cheaper tiers of storage. It has since decreased its AWS storage costs by 35%. 

For more techniques on minimizing cloud costs, read the rest of the report from Insider.