Staying abreast of the ever-evolving IT landscape is challenging, particularly as businesses strive to remain cost-conscious. Recent reports underscore the significant challenges faced by businesses.  

In late May 2025, over a three quarters (77%) of businesses with 10 or more employees reported that their staffing costs, covering wages, bonuses, national insurance (NI) and pension contributions, had increased over the preceding three months; a rise of 41% since late February 2025, and a 17% rise from the year previous.  

With these organisational pressures in mind, it is evident that departmental teams, such as IT, are being pressed to achieve more with less and must find the time to manage and maintain IT environments while delivering projects that provide genuine value to their organisations.  

Added to this, the pace of technology changes, such as the rapid rise in business AI, makes it difficult to keep up with new best practices. Where once organisations rushed to digitally transform operations and migrate to cloud and cloud-hybrid infrastructure, now businesses must reassess and rearchitect their cloud infrastructure to minimise business costs and improve service levels.  

“Unlike CSP renewals and M365 licenses, cloud environments such as Azure suffer from complex subscription models that can easily cause business inefficiencies,” says Brian Sibley, Virtual CTO at leading UK managed services provider Espria. “This approach allows for flexible resource management and cost control but requires business owners and IT operators to grasp where cloud operational inefficiencies lie, and how to optimise for costs without sacrificing productivity.” 

“While ‘lift-and-shift’ was common in early Azure adoption – taking existing in-house architecture and replicating that 1-for-1 in the cloud – the focus has shifted to reassessing and transforming operations to get the best business value and performance. Organisations often start with a single subscription – as seen in the hub and spoke model – but this has led to complications as the environment grows, as it’s harder for business owners to identify and tag resources that aren’t needed or may be costing them money.” 

“It’s time to turn off the tap for wasted consumption. Unmonitored, SMEs are getting billed for technology they aren’t utilising. A well-architected cloud environment will make the most out of your Azure subscription, whilst balancing technical, operational and financial requirements and limitations.” 

Sibley highlights that managed services analytics tools help cut out the confusion and give greater visibility to areas of business cloud environments racking up costs.  

“Mature internal visibility is needed for effective business decision-making, and that requires detailed expenditure and resource allocation analytics. Most SMEs have limited understanding around their IT costs, or a lack of expertise overseeing them, but, additionally, understanding a technically complicated environment from a finance perspective can be challenging in itself. Clear and concise billing models are needed for a wholly comprehensive understanding.” 

“Realistically, SMEs cannot always afford top, best-in-show options, and so seeking better, cheaper options can be a push/pull factor when communicating between financial and operational needs. Your MSP can provide that needed consultancy, providing insights into realistic SLAs, RTOs and RPOs when improving services. This involves maintaining proper governance balanced against ROI and ongoing business continuity.” 

“Similarly, many SMEs are using templates and infrastructure as code (IaC) models to deploy new software and updates to their cloud infrastructure, but this more generic approach doesn’t consider what individual needs and requirements the business has. Azure has something for everyone, but ensuring you’re only being billed for what you need is a critical part of cloud architecture management. 

Sibley concludes by emphasising why expert third-party guidance can point business owners and in-house IT operators in the right direction.  

“Prioritising what your business needs and its goals is directly tied to what your IT service delivery model must be tailored to. A quality managed services model wraps around that, including providing the experience and expertise needed to recommend the best steps for your organisation. This keeps your organisation working, and your customers as your prime focus while trusting your backend IT remains cost-efficient.”