The cloud is too expensive. That’s the most common complaint echoing through boardrooms whenever tech strategy sessions happen.

While that might be true on paper, or at the bottom of your cloud bills, it’s actually less about the cost of the cloud and more about the inefficiencies it reveals to you.

Instead of hiding under shared data centre costs or deferred hardware refresh budgets, the cloud surfaces every workload, every idle resource and every architectural decision in plain sight, with a monetary value attached to them.

The problem here isn’t really the cloud itself, but more about how you use it.

The ‘lift-and-shift’ trap

A common trap that organisations step into is the “lift-and-shift” approach – it’s often highlighted as a quick win, where workloads are moved out of data centres and into the cloud quickly to hit a deadline or reduce capex.

Lift-and-shift is very much a viable solution for many organisations moving into the cloud and is often the only viable first step, so it is important to note that the concept itself isn’t the trap. The real trap is not progressing any further with modernisation when the workloads have been shifted. The reality is that the approach without further modernisation leads to ballooning costs and mounting technical debt, because the workloads aren’t optimised to run efficiently on an infinitely scalable modern infrastructure. In fact, IDC reports that only 30% of migrated workloads are properly modernised after migration, leaving huge potential value on the table.

The continuous role of FinOps

Then there’s the matter of controlling the cloud costs. It’s not something you do once; instead, it’s an ongoing practice that’s embedded into how teams architect, deploy and operate. This is the core of FinOps, a cultural and operational shift that requires continuous visibility, accountability and iterative optimisation.

Good FinOps practices involve more than budgeting and doing cost recon from a usage report. It includes strategies like containerisation of workloads to use resources efficiently, moving to spot instances and open-source tooling, and adopting cloud-native architectures that can scale intelligently to get the most value for money out of every cent you spend.

Gartner predicts that through 2025, 60% of organisations will overspend on cloud by up to 70% due to a lack of cost optimisation. This failure can’t really be attributed to technology and is instead a strategic problem.

Reinvesting in innovation

Cost control isn’t the endgame of the entire process, though. The real value lies in what it unlocks: innovation. The freed-up resources can be invested in new features, accelerated digital products and services, and improved customer experiences.

A recent LSD Open client project for a large enterprise is a great example of this practice. The client was on the verge of moving its workloads back to an on-premises data centre, because cloud costs had simply spiralled out of control. With the right practices and skills, their spend was reduced by 60% in just two months, freeing up critical budget to restart innovation projects that had been frozen for years. It’s not about keeping the CFO happy; it’s more about ensuring that the cost of the cloud is delivering the value that it should.

Lacking in-house skills? Partner with someone who has them

A big barrier to entry for many businesses is the lack of internal skills to optimise workloads and the cloud estate, which is why it is critical to find the right modernisation partners and vendors to walk this journey with. Many partners and vendors can help you move workloads, but fewer focus on what happens next: the tough work of re-architecting, optimising and embedding financial accountability into every layer.

With the right migration and modernisation partners, you gain instant skills and experience and not just paying for migration support. Instead, you’re investing in sustained business value and future innovation capacity.

Faster modernisation and deeper cost savings through AI

On the horizon, AI tools and approaches are set to make modern platforms even more compelling for businesses. Thanks to AI-assisted code analysis, refactoring and automation, clients are seeing 70% faster modernisation of legacy applications. What once took years can now happen in months, unlocking agility and freeing budgets to accelerate innovation even further.

The crux of this message is that the cloud isn’t too expensive – inefficient practices are. Leaders who embrace continuous FinOps, prioritise modernisation and partner with the right experts will not only control costs, they’ll transform cost savings into growth and strategic advantage over competitors.