In 2026 the demand for cloud and compute power is only going to increase, triggered mainly by AI, but also to support new SaaS platforms that cover every conceivable business function or use case. It never stops. But that constant accumulation of data and applications is driving up costs. With organizations increasingly adopting multi-cloud strategies, the need to identify and implement ways to optimize cloud costs is more urgent than ever. Our own research found that more than 80% of container spend is wasted on idle resources and the percentage of organizations participating in commitment-based discounts is decreasing.

With infrastructure spanning across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, organizations need to be able to understand which actions they can take that will result in the most cost savings. Cloud cost optimization tools and strategies help you understand how and where you’re spending in a multi-cloud environment, so you can ensure that costs align with business goals. It will allow you to highlight idle or underutilized resources so you can optimize for cost efficiency while maintaining performance. For example, if you’re using Kubernetes in your multi-cloud environment, you could reduce costs by resizing the resources assigned to your containers. Cloud cost optimization will be front of mind for everyone over the next year, which is why its important organizations have the ability to manage cloud spend across their hyperscaler environments.