Arrcus Adds Cloud Egress Cost Control Tool

Looking to help cloud users with growing concerns over cloud egress costs (the amount cloud providers charge to move traffic off their networks), Arrcus has added an Egress Cost Control (ECC) capability to its multicloud networking (MCN) platform. The move could help enterprise customers save significantly on the bills they get from public cloud providers for moving their data in and out of cloud services.

The software, an enhancement to Arrcus’ FlexMCN solution, lets customers set an additional policy on their routing software that will enable FlexMCN to dynamically activate routes through the network that will result in the lowest egress costs.

This isn’t just about picking the shortest path; Arrcus has created algorithms that choose the route that will cost the least, depending on the specific cloud provider.

This could be a game changer for enterprises whose workloads require lots of data moves related to database updating, redundancy transactions, and resiliency, said Arrcus CEO Shekar Ayyar in an interview with Futuriom.

“[Customers] want to pay the least amount possible… but some companies are paying three hundred or four hundred million dollars annually in cloud charges,” he said.

Hypescaler Costs Under the Microscope

By Arrcus’ reckoning, the new ECC feature could reduce hyperscaler connectivity costs up to 40%. And considering that connectivity is roughly 15% of the total cost of a public cloud contract, ECC could reduce the company’s total cloud bill by 6%, Ayyar said.

Arrcus FlexMCN, to which ECC has been added, is a component of the Arrcus Connected Edge (ACE) platform that helps simplify and expedite the setup of cloud operations for service providers, colocation providers, and telcos. FlexMCN makes all the components of the ACE platform available in any form factor -- in containers, on virtual machines, as software on white-box hardware, or as a cloud service -- so that customers can pick the parts they need to build services.

Arrcus’ announcement comes just two weeks after Google Cloud announced that it will eliminate egress charges for customers who leave Google Cloud Platform entirely. While that offer has some substantial caveats, it’s highlighted the growing customer demand for better deals from cloud hyperscalers. CEO Ayyar said the timing of the ECC announcement was coincidental to Google’s news. But he noted that the cloud provider “poked its competitors in the ribs” about the general market feeling.

Indeed, the Arrcus move is part of a wider trend toward cloud-cost optimization, an area that’s set to expand as companies adopt more hybrid and multicloud solutions. Over the past year, economic conditions have raised concerns about managing cloud infrastructure costs, and CxOs are tightening their budgets.

Startups Tackling Cloud Costs

The cloud-cost control movement is gathering steam. There is an expanding group of startups dedicated to solutions to cloud cost management and FinOps.

On the compute side, companies such as CAST AI, Kentik, Kubecost, Vantage, Virtana, and Zesty, to name just a few, take various approaches to monitoring and planning cloud computing costs. Some of these firms navigate discount programs, manage reserve instances, and recommend specific actions to save costs.

While compute costs are important, Arrcus's product introduction shows the growing need to help manage cloud networking costs. Arrcus isn’t the only MCN firm to see networking as a lever that can be used to provide better visibility and management of cloud services. Aviatrix’s CostIQ uses distributed telemetry to measure usage of shared cloud networks and assign the results to appropriate cost centers. Aviatrix has also looked to help users manage the costs of security and Network Address Translation (NAT) in the cloud with the introduction of its distributed firewall product. And Prosimo offers cost management as a feature of its MCN to help customers view and understand cloud costs at the network level.

Despite the competition, Arrcus’ solution stands out because it leverages the software routing framework to automatically save users money. That will be a welcome addition to any MCN environment.

The ECC will be automatically incorporated into all existing ACE implementations at no cost to customers. It is set for general availability by the end of Q1 this year.

Futuriom Take: Arrcus has introduced the right feature at the right time, showing how modern cloud-native solutions can help streamline cloud networking and reduce costs.