--- title: "Cloud Management" description: "Migration, day-two operations and FinOps cost control across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Cloudflare, run by an EU team with data residency built in." url: "https://nixit.io/services/cloud-management/" lang: "en" --- # Cloud Management We migrate, operate and continuously cost-optimise cloud environments, with everything defined in code you own. Cloud solves the hardware procurement problem and replaces it with two others: a bill that grows every month for reasons nobody can fully explain, and an environment where anyone with credentials can create resources that are never reviewed again. Two years in, the typical account holds dozens of instances with no identifiable owner, volumes left behind by deleted machines, test environments running through the weekend, and databases sized for a traffic peak that never arrived. This is an operations problem, not a technology one. ## Migration We do not move everything at once, and we do not move everything as-is. The starting point is an application inventory where each workload gets an explicit disposition: rehost, partially re-platform, replace with a managed service, or stay where it is. That last option is consistently undervalued. Steady workloads with high constant utilisation frequently cost more in cloud than on owned hardware in colocation, and migrating them destroys value. Migration runs in waves, starting with lower-criticality applications to validate the process and build the automation the rest of the project depends on. Each wave has a rollback plan that is tested before execution rather than written and filed. Critical systems move only after the team has rehearsed the procedure on lower-risk workloads. ## Day-two operations Once workloads are running, the environment needs to be operated. We define infrastructure in Terraform, version it in Git and apply changes through a pipeline rather than through the web console. That makes staging reproducible against production and makes a bad change identifiable and reversible. The console remains available for diagnosis, not for changes. Monitoring covers availability, performance and cost together. Budget alerts fire when a threshold is crossed, not at month end when the invoice has already been issued. We apply patches, rotate credentials, review IAM permissions on a schedule and remove access left over from finished projects, which tends to accumulate quietly until someone audits it. ## FinOps and cost control Cost optimisation is a monthly discipline rather than a one-off project. The first pass targets obvious waste: instances far larger than their measured utilisation, unattached volumes, reserved public addresses nobody uses, and snapshot chains retained indefinitely because no lifecycle policy was ever set. The second pass is structural, scheduling non-production environments to stop outside working hours and moving predictable workloads onto commitment-based discounts sized to actual baseline usage. What matters long term is attribution. Without a tagging policy that is enforced rather than merely documented, nobody can say what a given product or team costs to run. Once every resource has an identifiable owner, budget conversations become possible. The monthly report shows spend by team and product, the trend against previous months, and a short list of specific actions for the period ahead. ## Who this is for We work with companies moving to cloud for the first time who want to avoid the expensive early mistakes; with organisations whose cloud estate has grown without governance and now needs to be brought under control; and with product teams who would rather spend their time on the application than on platform operations. A recurring pattern among European clients is the environment assembled quickly during an urgent transition, which then hardened into permanent architecture with costs higher than what it replaced. Unwinding that carefully, without a disruptive rebuild, is a substantial part of our work. ## Compliance and EU positioning For clients in NIS2 scope we configure centralised logging with sensible retention, privileged access controls and network segmentation in line with the required technical measures. For GDPR, region restrictions are enforced technically rather than by policy alone, and processing locations are documented in a form you can hand to an auditor. Being EU-based removes friction that international clients otherwise absorb in contracts and transfer impact assessments. Data processing agreements are straightforward, support hours overlap the European working day, and there is no third-country transfer analysis attached to giving your provider administrative access. ## What you get - Wave-based migration plan with a disposition decision recorded for every application - Infrastructure as code in Git, with separate and reproducible staging and production environments - Monthly cost report broken down by team and product, with specific reduction actions - Governance guardrails: mandatory tagging, region restrictions, budget alerts and spend limits - Runbooks and operational documentation your own engineers can work from ## Technologies AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Cloudflare, Terraform, Kubernetes, AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management ## Frequently asked questions ### How much can we realistically cut from our cloud bill? For environments that have never been systematically reviewed, 25 to 40 percent within the first few months is common. Savings come from right-sizing over-provisioned instances, shutting non-production environments outside working hours, deleting orphaned volumes and snapshots, and committing steady-state workloads to Savings Plans or reserved capacity. ### Can you guarantee our data stays in the EU? We select EU regions, apply organisation-level policies that block resource creation elsewhere, and document where data is stored and processed. That documentation feeds directly into your GDPR records of processing activities. As an EU-based provider we are also not subject to third-country access regimes that complicate transfer assessments. ### Is multi-cloud a good idea? It carries a real operational cost that is often underestimated. We usually recommend a primary provider for the bulk of workloads plus specific services from others where the difference genuinely matters. Multi-cloud adopted as a principle rather than to meet a stated requirement doubles the operational surface for little return. ### What happens if we want to take operations back in-house? Everything is defined in Terraform in a repository you have access to from day one, and the cloud accounts are yours rather than ours. Handover means transferring access and running a knowledge transfer session. There is no proprietary tooling to unwind and no renegotiation required.