Cloud Optimisation Tips for the New Financial Year

With June 30 just around the corner, many organisations are reviewing budgets, tightening costs and planning for the new financial year. Cloud cost optimisation is an area that is often overlooked, and has the potential for spend and rate improvements. Without it, organisations may be overspending, underutilising resources or missing opportunities to improve performance and security.

The end of financial year is the perfect opportunity to reset and break inefficient habits. With the right guidance, optimising your cloud resources can kick off your financial year with reduced waste,improved efficiency and lower spend.

Before making any changes, you need a clear picture of what you’re actually using.

Many organisations accumulate unused or forgotten resources over time whether it be idle virtual machines, obsolete storage, or duplicate environments – all of which silently drive up costs without delivering value.

Review unused and underutilised instances, orphaned storage volumes and duplicate or oversized environments, to free up your organisation’s resources.

Rather than viewing your cloud environment as a box to tick or simply an operational expense, it should be seen as a strategic asset that supports and enhances your business objectives.

Focus on practical optimisation steps such as right-sizing workloads, eliminating idle resources, introducing automation, and implementing strong cost governance through regular reviews. These actions will ensure your cloud investment remains efficient and aligned with business outcomes.

Storage can silently accrue big expenses in your cloud, especially if there is minimal or no lifecycle management. In other words, you may be paying premium rates for data you’re not regularly accessing.

To avoid this from happening, we suggest setting up automated lifecycle policies, removing redundant or outdated backups, and matching infrequently accessed data to lower tiers.

Cloud optimisation and security are closely linked, with each reinforcing the other. When you back your business with a secure, well-optimised environment, you not only reduce unnecessary cloud spend but also minmise the risk of costly incidents.

During your EOFY review, remove unused accounts and access permissions, ensure workloads are updated, enable monitoring and alerting, and review backup and disaster recovery setups.

MSPs can help to shape the process of cloud optimisation into a well-oiled machine that monitors your environment, provides cost transparency, improves performance and security, and aligns your cloud strategy with business growth.

At AC3, we specialise in helping organisations reduce cloud waste and maximise performance through expert-led optimisation. Backed by deep AWS and Microsoft Azure expertise, and a mature FinOps approach, we deliver practical, measurable outcomes.

With our Cloud Commitment Optimiser, you gain access to an advanced AWS automated commitment management platform that continuously optimises your compute spend by dynamically managing Reserved Instances and Savings Plan, so you’re always getting the best value without the manual intervention.

Contact AC3 to establish a clear cloud roadmap and help you optimise your environment in the new financial year.