By Kirill Bensonoff

Whether your clients are using Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can increase your revenue and help them optimize cost savings at the same time.

Here are 3 ways to optimize your client’s cloud services and add value:

1. Get Them The Best Cloud Service Options For Their Specific Needs

Picking the right cloud options can be difficult, especially when a client’s needs can change over time. As a reseller, you can help them get the best deal that is specific to their needs.

Here is how to get the best deals with AWS:

With AWS Reserved Instance pricing, your client will have three methods of paying:

If your client has enough cash flow, paying all upfront (or even partial upfront) can give them the largest compound discount. (The difference in discount rates between partial and all upfront is small.)

How to get the best deals with Azure:

Paying upfront will also save them money with Azure. Microsoft will give your client a 2.5% to 5% discount based upon a 6 to 12 month prepayment. Reserved Instances with Azure can offer 30 to 50% discount over on-demand usage.

2. Monitor And Optimize As You Go

Whether you use Azure or AWS, it’s important to monitor your client’s usage to make sure they have the right services for their needs.

Make the most of reserved instances: Some clients may have concerns about using Reserved Instances, because they are afraid of being locked in while their costs grow out of control. With monitoring, you can make sure they’re making the best choices based upon their usage. While monitoring Reserved Instances, you can automatically repurpose unused instances, change their size, and modify availability zones.

Clean up orphaned snapshots: manual checking or third party tools can also allow you to clean up your client’s orphaned snapshots. These are frequently forgotten and can add to their cloud costs.

Making the most of available resources: Are your clients getting the most out of every instance? Some clients may have a 30% average CPU utilization on their instances. You can right-size their instances and keep them above 80% by reviewing the workloads and categorizing them based on how memory or CPU intensive they are. You can auto-scale their instances to help them lower costs during their off-hours.

3. Help Your Client Improve Application Performance

Some smart MSPs are now offering APM (application performance management) in their portfolio. This service is centered around using a set of tools and processes to improve application performance and help developers optimize their code. Those that are not yet offering this service are missing out.

It’s All About Helping The Client

You can increase revenue and help your clients save money at the same time. The value you add will strengthen the relationship with your clients, and reap benefits for your business for years to come.

About the Author:

Kirill Bensonoff is a seasoned entrepreneur and the founder of Unigma, a unified cloud management platform. Unigma has been featured in a number of publications, and Kirill blogs regularly about cloud, tech and growing your managed services business. He can be reached at [email protected].