Why an Azure cost management tool only gives you part of the picture

An Azure cost management tool can be a great way to track your Azure spending, but it only gives you part of the picture. In order to really understand your Azure usage and optimize your costs, you need to also use Azure monitoring tools. Azure monitoring tools provide insights into how your Azure resources are being used and can help you identify opportunities for optimization.

Without using Azure monitoring tools in addition to an Azure cost management tool, you may not be aware of all the ways you could be saving money on your Azure bill. For example, you may be able to reduce the size of your VMs or switch to a cheaper pricing tier for a particular resource. Azure monitoring tools can help you find these and other opportunities for optimization.

Also, these tools don't tell you what you don't know. They paint a picture of usage and cost but are only as good as their recommendations (assuming they make them) and interpretations. Read more about why cloud management software should be part of your cloud management planning here.

Once you have Azure monitoring and cost analysis in place what do you do next?

Once you have a complete picture of your Azure deployment including cost and usage data then you need to cover a few more areas:

• Auto Scaling - Once you know where your peaks and troughs are you can plan in scaling up and down to further drive down costs. But this needs to be an automated process so you need a way to do this
• Security - This is the proverbial moving target, and you need security hardening, maybe reactive scanning. Also, you might need something more with penetration testing or another higher level of security

As you can see, once you start to peel the onion there are many layers. An Azure cost management tool is just the beginning of this journey. Azure monitoring tools are essential for getting a complete view and understanding of where you can save money, but there might be other areas that also need to be considered when managing Azure costs as they impact the cost in a different way. This is all before you add in what you need for your Azure support plan or advisory/consultancy services.

So if you're looking to get the most out of your Azure investment, consider a cloud management service which includes all of these elements and gives you the complete solution you need.

CloudOps goes beyond Azure cost management and Azure monitoring by bringing together the most comprehensive suite of tools to help you monitor and manage your Azure resources, while also providing enterprise-grade security and performance optimizations - giving you a complete solution that ensures you're getting the most out of Azure.

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