Egress fees, also known as bandwidth or data transfer fees, are the fees charged by cloud network providers for transferring data out of the cloud.
For example, if an organization transfers data to the cloud for archival purposes but users retrieve it more frequently than intended, they may be charged additional egress expenditures. Additionally, egress fees may apply when data is withdrawn from the cloud for analytics or transferred to a different service area. These fees are distinct from the fees that corporations pay for cloud storage and computation.
Why are egress fees important?
Historically, cloud storage has been associated with cheaper operating costs. Cloud technologies and the pay-as-you-go principle has enabled developers and organizations to increase data storage. Although most cloud providers allow you to upload your data into the cloud for free, some organizations have uncovered unexpected fees for getting that data out of the cloud.
According to an IDC survey, 99% of cloud storage customers claimed they pay planned or unplanned egress fees, which contribute an average of 6% of an organization's cloud storage expenditures.
Egress fees may not concern users who keep a small quantity of data in the cloud or who only want to utilize a particular cloud architecture, but they can eventually deter an organization from utilizing cloud services for fear of a considerable rise in IT expenditures.
Firms have seen egress rates climb as they seek to do more with their data, such as mining archives for business insight or training artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. Data transfers might also be more expensive when a business has a structured hybrid or multi-cloud strategy.