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One of the greatest advantages of cloud computing is the scalability and the ability to use precisely the resources you need, precisely when you need them.

But too often MSPs are managing cloud environments without paying close enough attention to how much of their customers’ cloud spend is being used wisely.

That’s the premise behind a new product from startup ParkMyCloud, billed as a way to instantly and dramatically reduce the costs of using public cloud services.

Initially, the technology worked only with Amazon Web Services (AWS) but was expanded in recent months to include Microsoft Azure.

Functionality for Google Cloud Platform and a SoftLayer integration for IBM are said to be in the works.

In short, ParkMyCloud can be set to automatically shut down – or park – public cloud resources during no-use hours.

“Reduce cloud cost by 65 (percent),” the company’s website reads. “Automate AWS (and) Azure scheduling in 15 (minutes).”

In a news release announcing $1.65 million in seed funding last September, ParkMyCloud co-founder and CEO Jay Chapel described the startup this way:

“Companies are spending billions of dollars a year on 24 x 7 servers, when many of those resources are idle much of the time,” the statement said. “ParkMyCloud customers can ‘park’ or pause non-production servers such as development, staging, testing and QA when they aren’t needed, saving companies up to 60 (percent) on their AWS bills.”

That 60 percent figure was calculated for AWS public cloud.

Azure, the fastest-growing public cloud service, was added later.

“Dominant competitor (AWS) has had more time to feel and subsequently address growing pains that Azure users are now starting to feel,” Chapel wrote in a recent article for the publication CloudTech.

“This means that AWS users have more options available to them to address certain concerns that come with using public cloud,” the piece goes on. “Chief among these concerns is managing costs.”

Citing research from RightScale’s 2017 State of the Cloud report, Chapel offers the following analysis of cloud waste:

ParkMyCloud connects to AWS via IAM role or user credential; and to Azure via dedicated credential.

“Your compute resources will be displayed in ParkMyCloud’s single-view dashboard, across all availability zones and any number of AWS and/or Azure accounts,” the website states.

“To ‘park’ your compute resources, you assign them schedules of hours they will run or be temporarily stopped…” it continues. “Most non-production resources…can be parked at nights and on weekends, when they are not being used.”

The dashboard provides a running tally on how much money the user is saving.

Client dollars saved on cloud compute services can be put to work for other purposes, Chapel argued in another CloudTech piece. 

“This keeps the end user satisfied by giving them more value per dollar,” the article states. “The MSPs are satisfied by providing more, and stickier, services to their customers.”