While many think that choosing a cloud computing option should be simple, it’s actually very complex. In fact, most companies are already using multiple clouds, and they may be wasting up to 35 percent of their cloud usage, according to a RightScaleInc.’s  “State of the Cloud Survey,” losing money in the process.

Choosing the right options for implementing cloud is so complex that, according to one chief technology officer, it’s like trying to shop at a Costco — and humans shouldn’t even be doing it in the first place.

“It’s like a giant Costco with huge aisles. You don’t know what’s in them, the stock is changing all the time, you got a giant shopping list that’s kind of vague … and you’re in there trying to figure out what to get,” said Andrew Hillier (pictured), co-founder and chief technology officer of Cirba Inc. (DBA Densify). “And people are doing it wrong.”

Hillier spoke with Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed how best to figure out cloud options for businesses. (* Disclosure below.)

Analyzing workloads for optimization of cloud

Purchasing cloud has to be done by using analytics to optimize, according to Hillier. Hillier runs Densify, an analytics as a service company that helps businesses optimize supply and demand within their hybrid cloud environments.

“You can do it on a lot less, and usually significantly less,” Hillier said. “It creates a cost challenge, but we almost see it more as an automation challenge.”

What Densify does to help optimize cloud solutions is to start with the workloads themselves by using machine learning to pick up patterns. “We learn the patterns of exactly what’s happening in the workloads … some might be kind of steady; some might be peaky,” Hillier described. Then Densify helps determine what the ideal configuration is for cloud for specific needs. “It really should not be done by a human,” he said.

For example, many businesses prepay for a bunch of types of cloud services. However, Densify’s philosophy is to analyze workloads, optimize workloads, and then finally prepay for cloud.

“So we see a lot of people actually locking themselves into the wrong configuration because they actually went ahead and prepaid without optimizing first,” Hillier said. It takes some deeper analyzation to determine the right course of action, but it usually saves the company a lot of money to analyze first, Hillier concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld conference. (* Disclosure: Densify Inc. sponsored this segment, with additional broadcast sponsorship from VMware Inc. Densify, VMware, and other sponsors do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE