SQLBits 2024

Stand Fast - How Governance Can Save You a Fortune

Why is it that cloud projects often end up way more expensive than they should? The answer might surprise you: a lack of governance. Come learn how to turn governance from limitation to enablement.
Why is it that cloud projects often end up way more expensive than they should? The answer might surprise you: a lack of governance.

It is easy to get stuck on the technical aspects of a cloud project and hence try to find equally technical ways of saving money. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and seldom is that clearer than in an environment where you pay for every second of compute consumed. Making a query run faster, optimizing a pipeline, or storing a bit less in a data lake, can decrease your overall consumption costs, but there might be even bigger savings lurking just out of view.

The solution for saving the big bucks is spelled "governance". Most people see governance as something tedious, boring and ultimately futile, as users will inevitably find a way around the governance limitations and romp all over the environment. But if we look at governance as a tool for enablement, a way to make work easier for the end user and the administrator alike, as an opportunity optimize spend - then the whole dynamic shifts. Wouldn't it be amazing if we could combine useful guardrails, increased productivity AND optimized cloud spend? Let me show you how!

This session will look at unexpected drivers of cost, discuss ways to surface (and mitigate) some of them, and try to convince you why governance is really the best way to save money in the long run. You might even be able to take some of the learnings from this session and apply it to your on-prem environment as well!