The Art of Cost Management: Utilising an azure cost management tool

Once you have moved infrastructure to the cloud balancing cost and perfromance is often  an IT teams biggest headache. In this blog post, we will explore the art of cost management and how to unleash the power of Azure to reduce your cloud spend and improve your ROI.

Should you use the Azure native tools or an Azure cost management tool?

At IG CloudOps, we understand the importance of cost management in cloud computing. That's why we developed our cloud management platform to help our customers optimise their cloud environments for maximum efficiency and cost savings. With our cloud management platform CloudOps, we provide expert insights, recommendations, and advice to help you take control of your cloud budget and achieve cost efficiency.

The Azure native route

The first step in effective cost management is to understand your cloud spending patterns. Azure provides a range of tools and services to help you monitor and analyze your cloud usage, including Azure Cost Management + Billing. This tool allows you to track your cloud costs, view usage trends, and identify cost optimisation opportunities.

After gaining a comprehensive understanding of your cloud usage, the next step is to embark on optimising your costs. A particularly effective strategy is rightsising your resources. This entails a thorough analysis of your resource utilisation, allowing for adjustments in resource allocation based on actual usage. Aligning your resource capacity with your specific usage requirements not only eliminates unnecessary expenditure but also leads to a reduction in overall cloud costs.

Following on from this is taking advantage of Azure's cost-saving features. For example, Azure provides a range of cost-effective virtual machine (VM) types that can help you save money without sacrificing performance. Additionally, Azure offers reserved instances, which provide discounts of up to 72% for long-term VM usage.

To further optimise your costs, it's important to monitor your cloud spending on an ongoing basis. Azure Cost Management + Billing provides real-time cost monitoring and alerts, allowing you to quickly identify any unexpected spikes in usage and take corrective action before they impact your budget.

In addition to these strategies, there is a range of best practices you can follow to improve your cloud cost management. For example, it's important to regularly review your cloud usage and costs and to identify areas where you can further optimise your spending. Additionally, you should ensure that your cloud resources are properly tagged, to make it easier to track and allocate costs.

How an Azure cost management tool (CloudOps) can help

At IG CloudOps, we believe that effective Azure cost management is an ongoing process. That's why we provide our customers with ongoing expert advice and recommendations to help you optimise your cloud environments for maximum efficiency and cost savings. With our cloud management platform, you can take control of your cloud budget and achieve cost efficiency, without sacrificing performance or reliability.

Our CloudOps platform, as well as covering other core areas of cloud management, also provides cost management in real-time. It takes in the data about your workloads and then uses machine learning and AI to process this and make recommendations,unlike the Microsoft native tools which give you information and limited recommendations, or spam you with multiple irrelevant recommendations. We also include cost audits and regular feedback from our Azure consultancy team as part of our recommendations. 

With Microsoft tools, you get a lot of information and recommendations, but then you have to make decisions about which ones to implement. Or you have to make decisions about scaling your infrastructure to meet performance needs. Without being an Azure expert, you can be making these decisions largely blind and that can have a high impact on your Azure costs both in the short and long term. 

To summarise, effective cost management is critical to the success of any cloud deployment. With Azure Cost Management + Billing and the expert insights and recommendations provided by CloudOps, you can take control of your cloud spending and achieve cost efficiency. By following best practices and implementing cost optimization strategies, you can unleash the power of Azure and achieve maximum ROI for your cloud investment.

To find out more about ClooudOps and to see it in action, book a test drive. 

Or to speak to a member of the Azure team contact us today.

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