The Cloud Cost Wake-Up Call
ITPro, Thursday, September 17th, 2026
Flexera puts cloud waste at 29%, and the author's FinOps team routinely finds up to a third of cloud outlay recoverable.
Cloud migration created a decade of growth for the channel, and the author argues cloud optimization will define the next one, with AI workloads bringing more complex commercial models.
Most companies are overpaying for capacity through opaque billing instruments, inaccurate usage forecasts and workloads running in the wrong place; Flexera's 2026 State of the Cloud Report puts cloud waste at 29%, and the author's own FinOps practice finds up to a third of outlay recoverable.
He attributes this to fifteen years of patchwork adoption, where estates grew through a series of cloud-first or modernization projects and SaaS contracts rather than a holistic operating strategy.