According to research by Softchoice, 57% of IT leaders have exceeded their cloud budget at one point or another. Twenty percent have exceeded it by more than 20%. Any organization investing in the cloud, to any extent, can experience cost overruns. Cost optimization in the cloud is a universal issue, and the budgetary practices that made sense in the era of on-premises (CapEx) computing are exactly the opposite of what’s required to run cloud efficiently (OpEx). However, in the cloud, because resources are flexible, the opposite approach is optimal and creating a balanced cloud budget is key.