How to build a profitable cloud practice in 2025 and beyond

Cloud adoption is no longer a novelty – it’s a necessity. Yet, for many companies, turning cloud investments into revenue is still out of reach. Rising costs, wasted spend, security gaps, and increasing complexity in multi-cloud environments are making it harder than ever to maximise business value from the cloud.

 

To thrive in 2025 and beyond, businesses must go beyond simply “using” the cloud. True leaders will master it through disciplined cost management, robust governance frameworks, and strategic alignment between IT and business objectives. Profitability will not come from scale alone, but from smart execution.

 

The cloud profitability challenge

 

Despite years of investment, too many businesses are seeing cloud bills spiral out of control. As reported in the Flexera 2024 State of the Cloud Report, approximately 32% of cloud spend is wasted annually, often due to underutilised resources, over-provisioning, or lack of cost visibility.

 

Undoubtedly, the cloud has become the backbone of digital business, supporting everything from AI workloads to customer experience platforms. But as organisations embrace hybrid and multi-cloud environments, the complexity, and the risk, only increases.

Compounding the issue, the IBM 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report highlights cloud misconfigurations as one of the most common causes of data breaches. Fragmented governance also leaves finance, IT, and business leaders struggling to hold cloud investment accountable.

 

This is why a profitable cloud practice must be built on three pillars: visibility, optimisation, and governance.

 

1. The importance of visibility

 

Without visibility, cloud spend can quickly become a black hole for budgets. The first step is eliminating underutilisation and shadow IT. Modern FinOps practices provide real-time visibility into spend, enabling IT and finance leaders to see where money is being wasted and take swift corrective action.

 

To strengthen visibility, businesses can:
• Implement automated billing alerts for budget overruns
• Tag and classify resources to align spend with business units
• Run quarterly optimisation reviews to identify unused or oversized resources

 

By embedding these practices, organisations can reclaim a significant portion of the 32% in wasted spend – transforming sunk cost into working capital.

 

2. Aligning cloud spend with business outcomes

 

FinOps adoption is growing every year. What was once a back-office IT function has become a core business discipline that drives real accountability and financial clarity on cloud investments.

 

FinOps is not only a cost management tool, but also a cultural shift that aligns finance, IT, and business teams around shared cloud goals. Teams can budget and forecast cloud spend with greater accuracy, as well as link investment directly to business outcomes, not just IT metrics. For organisations aiming to build a profitable cloud practice, FinOps is no longer optional – it’s a best practice.

 

3. Strengthen security and compliance

 

Profitability is impossible without trust. Misconfigurations, weak monitoring, and fragmented governance are the leading causes of most cloud breaches – and the associated costs are staggering. The IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2024 report stated that the average global breach cost has reached $4.88 million.

 

To mitigate risk and protect profitability, proactive security and compliance monitoring must be built into cloud practices. This includes:
• Regularly reviews of access controls, policies, and workloads
• Deploying automated backup and disaster recovery solutions from day one
• Implementing continuous monitoring to detect anomalies before they escalate
By closing these gaps, businesses not only avoid costly breaches, but also build long-term resilience.

 

4. Reduce downtime and scale with confidence

 

Downtime is one of the most direct threats to profitability. By partnering with managed cloud service providers like Cybit, businesses can significantly reduce downtime while enabling seamless scalability to meet demand. This agility ensures businesses never pay for more than they need but remain prepared to capture growth opportunities when they arise.

 

5. Integrate sustainability into cloud strategy

 

Cloud optimisation isn’t just about cost – it’s about conscience. Efficient resource use reduces energy consumption and helps organisations meet their ESG targets. The result? Minimised spend, reduced carbon footprint, and stronger appeal to boards and investors focused on sustainability.

 

Leveraging channel partners for success

 

To build a profitable cloud practice, businesses should consider partnering with channel experts who offer managed services and strategic guidance. Managed cloud services play a critical role in offloading day-to-day operational tasks such as provisioning, patching, and scaling. By outsourcing these functions, organisations can optimise performance and free up internal resources to focus on innovation and strategic initiatives, ultimately driving profitability.

 

Cybit’s FlexCare helps businesses turn control into confidence:
• Fully managed service: 24/7 monitoring, incident response, and direct escalation to AWS and Microsoft
• Cost and performance optimisation: Quarterly reviews, rightsizing recommendations, and automated billing alerts
• Security and compliance: Regular audits, backup and recovery, and proactive improvement plans
• Hybrid support: Seamless integration with on-premises infrastructure
• Transparency: A customer portal with live reporting, ticketing, and self-service tools
• Certified expertise: Accredited teams with deep AWS and Azure partnerships
• SLA-driven results: Rapid response times and measurable accountability

 

By combining FinOps, managed services, and certified expertise, Cybit ensures companies’ cloud practice is not just operational – but profitable, sustainable, and secure.

 

Building a profitable cloud practice isn’t about chasing the latest cloud tools. It’s about making the cloud work harder for your business. That means visibility, optimisation, governance, and the right partner. Cybit provides companies with the control, confidence, and expertise to turn cloud from a cost centre into a growth engine.

 
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By Peter Ollerenshaw​

 

Peter is a Cloud Solutions Advisor at Cybit, specialising in helping organisations improve IT efficiency, profitability, and long-term resilience through innovative and transformative cloud technologies. With over 15 years of experience in the IT channel, he has led and delivered major cloud projects across both corporate and public sectors. Known for his client-first approach, Peter has successfully managed large-scale, disruptive initiatives and tenders that drive measurable business impact and future-ready IT performance.