5 Essential Tips for Analyzing and Optimizing Your Cloud Storage Costs with Silk

Cloud storage is a core component of modern IT infrastructure, powering everything from enterprise applications to AI workloads. But as organizations migrate more data to the cloud, costs can quickly spiral out of control. Without a clear strategy for analyzing and managing cloud storage expenses, businesses risk paying for unused capacity, inefficient performance, and redundant data copies.

Silk helps enterprises rein in cloud storage costs while boosting performance. By providing a high-performance, intelligent data layer, Silk enables you to optimize storage usage, reduce redundancy, and align costs with business needs. Here are five practical tips for analyzing and optimizing your cloud storage costs—and how Silk can help:

1. Identify All Your Storage Sources

Many enterprises have data spread across multiple environments: production databases, dev/test environments, data lakes, backups, and now AI training datasets. Start by creating a comprehensive inventory of where your data lives. This includes:

• Cloud-native storage like Amazon S3, Azure Blob, or Google Cloud Storage
• Block and file storage attached to compute resources
• Data backups and disaster recovery locations
• Archived or cold storage tiers

How Silk Helps: Silk provides a centralized view of your data landscape, making it easier to understand where your storage dollars are going and how to optimize them.

2. Break Down Costs by Usage and Access Patterns

Cloud storage pricing isn’t just about how much data you store. Costs vary depending on:

• Access frequency (hot vs. cold data)
• Egress and transfer fees
• Performance requirements (standard, premium, or ultra tiers)
• Redundancy levels (single-zone vs. multi-region replication)

Look at your usage data to understand which workloads truly need high-performance storage and which could be moved to a lower-cost tier.

How Silk Helps: Silk automatically optimizes performance so you can run workloads on lower-cost storage without sacrificing speed, helping you strike the perfect balance between cost and performance.

3. Eliminate Redundant Data Copies

As organizations embrace AI and analytics, they often create multiple copies of the same dataset for different teams or purposes. While this might make data easier to access, it dramatically increases storage costs.

Action Steps:

• Audit for duplicate or outdated data copies
• Consolidate datasets where possible
• Implement policies that limit unnecessary duplication

How Silk Helps: With Silk’s intelligent data management, you can significantly reduce the need for multiple data copies, cutting down on storage bloat and associated costs.

4. Right-Size Your Storage for AI and GenAI Workloads

AI projects have unique storage demands. Large language models, training datasets, and inference workloads can quickly overwhelm traditional storage systems. Without proper planning, you might be overpaying for storage that isn’t optimized for high-throughput, low-latency performance.

When analyzing costs, consider:

• The balance between performance and budget
• Whether you need specialized high-performance storage for certain AI tasks
• How you can keep training data close to your production databases to minimize data movement costs

How Silk Helps: Silk accelerates AI and GenAI workloads by delivering the performance you need without requiring expensive, high-tier storage—saving you money while keeping innovation moving fast.

5. Monitor and Adjust Continuously

Cloud environments are dynamic. A one-time analysis isn’t enough to keep costs under control. Establish an ongoing review process to:

• Monitor monthly cost reports
• Set alerts for unexpected increases
• Reevaluate storage policies as workloads evolve

How Silk Helps: Silk’s real-time insights make it easier to monitor storage usage and costs, so you can adjust on the fly and prevent budget surprises.

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Analyzing cloud storage costs isn’t just about saving money—it’s about creating a sustainable, scalable infrastructure that supports innovation. Silk helps you do exactly that by optimizing performance, reducing redundancy, and ensuring your data strategy aligns with your business goals.

If you’re ready to take control of your cloud storage costs, Silk provides the intelligent data layer you need to simplify cost management and unlock long-term savings. Learn more about how Silk can help you minimize storage costs while maximizing performance.