Companies pump up their infrastructures with cloud instances, but after an early flurry of activity they lose track of the resources and, in some cases, forget where things are. They're left with unused, "zombie" assets. Companies need to adopt strategies to continuously identify and eliminate zombie instances.

In fact, nearly 20 percent of all purchased cloud instances are severely underutilized. This translates to thousands, if not millions, of dollars that would be better used to strengthen security or infrastructure. The machine is on, drawing power and creating bills, but the only measurable output is a usage bill. Companies are unknowingly paying for a surprising amount of infrastructure they don't end up using.

Cloud service management company CloudHealth Technologies, has offered the following best practices to get this dormant infrastructure back in shape. IT administrators need to identify zombie assets, verify idle status and shut off anything that is unused. Verification is often the hardest part because you must communicate with individuals and teams responsible for running the assets and figure out if there is a business reason to maintain idle assets. These are ongoing conversations that persist as you uncover zombie infrastructure.