With Umesh Mehta, President - CIO Association

Cloud adoption in enterprises typically begins with clarity: lower costs, faster delivery, and scalable infrastructure. Business cases are built on these assumptions, and approvals follow quickly.

However, as highlighted by Mr. Umesh Mehta in this episode of Cloud Decoded, the real financial impact of cloud often emerges much later, typically 12 to 24 months after migration when actual invoices begin to diverge sharply from projections.

A key reason is that initial planning frequently misses several structural cost components. These include over-provisioned compute and storage resources, data egress and network transfer charges, security tooling that is added post-facto, and the cost of specialized cloud talent required to operate at scale. Each of these individually appears minor, but together they significantly inflate total spend.

Another overlooked factor is currency exposure. Since hyperscaler contracts are dollar-denominated, Indian enterprises are directly impacted by rupee volatility, which can quietly add a meaningful cost layer over time.

The discussion also points to a growing governance gap. Cloud responsibility is often distributed across finance, procurement, IT, and business teams, resulting in unclear ownership. This fragmentation leads to weak accountability for cost optimisation and usage discipline.

Emerging workloads such as AI further complicate the picture. Unlike traditional applications, AI workloads are unpredictable, compute-intensive, and difficult to forecast accurately, making cost control even more challenging.

The episode concludes with a clear caution on long-term vendor commitments. Given the rapid evolution of cloud pricing models and technology capabilities, multi-year rigid contracts can introduce unnecessary risk if workload assumptions change.

Ultimately, the conversation reinforces a central point: cloud success is not defined by migration itself, but by continuous governance, disciplined consumption, and clear ownership after migration.

Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2WCsVVTwQw