It’s easy to go over your cloud budget if you’re not careful. With so many factors that can affect pricing, it’s important to have a strong strategy in place to keep your expenses under control. With the right mix of smart planning, tools, and a little creative thinking, you can cut costs and still get top-notch cloud performance.

The virtualization market is dominated by two vendors: Amazon Web Services and VMware. Both have the largest market share in their respective fields, the former in cloud-based solutions and the latter in on-premises virtualization. Now, those two platforms are compatible with each other.

It’s nearly impossible to discuss virtualization without bringing up Amazon Web Services (AWS). It was one of the first big names in user-friendly virtualization services and it’s only gotten better over the years. With its latest release, AWS is providing customers with some serious computing power.