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Are you seeing the returns you expected
from your cloud investments? If your
answer is no, you're not alone. Cloud
adoption was supposed to speed up
innovation and improve agility. But
without a unified approach to managing
infrastructure and security, those
benefits can slip out of reach. When
teams operate in silos without a formal
cloud program, cloud costs rise, tools
become fragmented, and complexity takes
over. Visibility suffers and that slows
everything down. From app development
and innovation to ROI. The potential of
cloud is real, but unlocking it takes
more than just migration. It takes a
thoughtful connected strategy for how
you build and manage cloud
infrastructure and systems. Let's talk
about how you can optimize cloud
operations and start seeing returns.
I recently spoke with a platform leader
who shared how their team was blindsided
by cloud overspend. 6 months into a
major product rollout, they discovered
nearly 35% of their cloud budget was
wasted on orphaned resources and ad hoc
infrastructure builds. This story is not
that unusual. Three out of four
companies are seeing inefficiencies rise
thanks to challenges like
overprovisioning, tool sprawl, and
limited visibility. The impact of these
challenges is real. 40% of IT leaders
say lack of visibility and control is
holding back their cloud optimization
efforts. And 70% of companies are
struggling to hire cloud talent with the
right experience.
That puts more pressure on existing
teams, slows down projects, and drives
up operational costs. So now IT leaders
are being asked to scale faster while
solving these challenges at the same
time. But when operations are
fragmented, it often creates more chaos
and clarity, and that makes it even
harder to deliver real ROI.
To truly optimize cloud operations, we
need to stop treating infrastructure and
security as afterthoughts.
The old model, build, deploy, monitor,
leaves gaps. It may get apps out faster,
but it also creates delays, risks, and
scaling issues. What's needed is a shift
to proactive life cyclebased management
where infrastructure and security are
integrated from day zero all the way
through to day end. At Hashi Corp, we
help organizations do just that by
unifying infrastructure and security
under a single control plane. The
result, streamlined operations, stronger
security, and more time to focus on
delivering value. Optimizing cloud
operations is a key part of doing cloud
right. But as organizations scale,
things can get messy and expensive very
fast. Tackling that chaos takes the
right strategy and the right tools,
especially when it comes to
infrastructure and security. Managing
cloud cost isn't just about cutting
spend. It's about making sure every
dollar drives efficiency and supports
your business's goals. But without
visibility, that's tough. Teams often
build custom infrastructure that's hard
to track, expensive to maintain, and
inconsistent across environments.
Onboarding slows down, innovation
stalls, and teams get stuck juggling
fragmented tools and compliance
requirements. It can feel like you have
to choose between controlling costs or
moving fast, but you don't have to. A
better approach starts with a
standardized platform that's managed
through a central control plane. One
that gives developers built-in cost
controls and reusable modules that lets
them deploy faster with security already
baked in. This provides a self-service
developer platform that empowers
developers to develop quickly and freely
while allowing security teams to easily
maintain governance and compliance.
All while lowering overhead and giving
managers better visibility over how
resources are being used. As a result,
visibility is no longer a manual
dashboard, but has become a daily
decision-making tool. Now teams can make
smarter decisions that optimize
resources and prevent budget overruns
while ensuring optimizations are having
the desired effect. The result, smarter
spend, faster innovation, and confident
scaling, all without compromising speed
or security. The next area we need to
think about is efficient cloud and
resource utilization. Many organizations
lack visibility in their cloud overhead
costs and without proper controls, these
can spiral quickly. Teams often spend
more time learning and managing
fragmented tooling than delivering
applications and innovation. And custom
one-off infrastructure, what we call
snowflake deployments, drive up costs
and make scaling a real challenge. The
result, overprovisioning and the
inability to scale rapidly has led to an
average of 67% annual increases in
budgets for cloud spend. This means
higher spend, slower delivery, and a
constant sense of starting from scratch
with every new project. So, how do you
fix it? First, you need to streamline
cloud operations and standardize
infrastructure so teams can eliminate
inefficiencies and manage resources
proactively. With a central control
plane, you can automate infrastructure
and security workflows using pre-built
templates and enforce consistent
infrastructure patterns from the start.
That means faster provisioning,
repeatable deployments, and reusable
modules that scale with you. Developers
get the speed and flexibility they need
while security and ops teams maintain
the control and compliance they require,
all without the usual friction and in a
costefficient manner. This approach
consolidates tooling, eliminates
Snowflake deployments, and gives you
better governance and cost efficiency.
Now you get more control, less
complexity, and no trade-offs between
speed, security, and costs. Lastly,
let's talk about resilience. I recently
spoke with a security team that was
stuck in constant firefighting, manual
secrets rotations, inconsistent access
controls, and reactive governance. It
was exhausting and expensive. When
processes aren't standardized,
complexity skyrockets. Decentralized
secrets management and manual workflows
increase the risk of breaches and eat up
time and resources. Improper access
controls can lead to costly security
incidents.
And inefficient workflows without proper
governance often leave resources unused,
misallocated, or misconfigured, further
driving up cloud costs. Without strong
policy enforcement, teams face increased
overhead, more human error, and greater
risk. All of this adds up to potential
outages, security breaches, and serious
financial and reputational damage. The
fix: centralize and automate. Teams are
reducing risk and complexity by
standardizing and managing secrets,
access, and policy enforcement through a
central control plane. With centralized
secrets and least privileged access,
security becomes consistent and
scalable.
Automation helps detect drift and fix
misconfigurations before they cause real
world problems. And with built-in
redundancy and recovery, systems stay
resilient even when things go wrong.
Instead of reacting to issues, teams are
proactively scaling secure, reliable
infrastructure they can confidently use
to drive increased development velocity.
These aren't one-off wins. They're what
happens when teams adopt a unified
control plane for infrastructure and
security. At Hashi Corp, we help you
build the foundation for efficient,
secure, and costoptimized cloud
operations. With a standardized,
automated approach, you can reduce
waste, regain visibility, and unlock the
full value of your cloud investments.
Want to learn more? Check out the
resources below, and let's talk about
how you can do cloud right. Thanks for
watching.
Cloud spend is rising, but visibility and efficiency still lag behind. Learn how organizations can proactively manage cost, improve resource utilization, and build automated, resilient operations that scale. Learn more → https://www.hashicorp.com/solutions/optimize-operations Getting more from the cloud starts with better operational intelligence. In this first episode of the Optimize series, you’ll see how teams can move beyond reactive firefighting to continuous optimization — using shared workflows and policy-based automation to improve reliability and reduce waste. We’ll cover how to establish cost governance, surface actionable performance insights, and standardize operational practices so you can scale efficiently across complex hybrid and multi-cloud estates. The result: fewer surprises, faster remediation, and stronger financial outcomes tied directly to workload behavior. The Infrastructure Cloud from HashiCorp enables this approach through Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (ILM) and Security Lifecycle Management (SLM), providing a consistent control plane for automated operations, resource governance, and ROI optimization. Key topics: - Cloud cost visibility - Operational efficiency - Resilient operations Learn more → https://www.hashicorp.com/solutions/optimize-operations Watch the full series → https://www.hashicorp.com/do-cloud-right-explained/optimize #CloudCost #CloudOptimization #ROI #CloudOperations #FinOps #CostVisibility Subscribe to our YouTube Channel → https://www.youtube.com/c/HashiCorp?sub_confirmation=1 For hands-on interactive labs, visit HashiCorp Developer → https://developer.hashicorp.com/ HashiCorp, an IBM company, helps organizations automate hybrid cloud environments with Infrastructure and Security Lifecycle Management. HashiCorp offers The Infrastructure Cloud on the HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP) for managed cloud services, as well as self-hosted enterprise offerings and community source-available products. For more information, visit hashicorp.com. For more information → https://hashicorp.com LinkedIn → https://linkedin.com/company/hashicorp X → https://x.com/HashiCorp Facebook → https://facebook.com/HashiCorp