Azure Services: Cloud Cost Management

Often, the most critical part of any business comes down to the numbers for overhead and total costs and fees. If you happen to need to use cloud services and other services related to running a business online, then you could certainly benefit from Microsoft Azure Cost Management Services.

Azure Cost Management Overview

One of the aspects of your business that you can handle on this Azure service is figuring out how cost relates to your need for visibility across different clouds or even multi-cloud environments. It’s a simplified method for taking control of all of your cloud costs here, including across different parts of your business.  The system basically works through the company Cloudyn that has a partnership with Azure.

Currently, the site indicates that there are more than 12,000 cloud users monitoring their management through Azure. There are also more than 400,000 virtual machines running at the same time. This includes so many, that it apparently accounts for 15 percent of cloud resources across multiple different companies including Google and Microsoft.  So, in other words, you know that it has a good chance of working fairly well for you because that is what’s happening for many people using it quite well.

The support available works through Azure, of course, but you can also choose to use the system for other services as well.

Getting an Efficiency Spike

If you have cloud resources that aren’t being used, then this is a problem because you could be more efficient and thus end up with more money. Regardless of what you’re using it for, such as virtual machines, efficiency is always to be sought. This service will help you expand your efficiency by taking all of the data you have from running your business through the cloud and then mapping it against what other people are doing so you can see how you match up.

The service also gives you the ability to get suggestions for how you can allocate resources better and improve your efficiency standing in general.

Graphing

One of the most effective ways to make sure that you understand something and even show it to others in a way that they will understand is by using visualizations. This is something that you can do with the Azure Cost Management option. The service allows you to get information on all cloud usage that you might want to monitor, as well as anything about billing. This includes the usual options such as Google platform or AWS. Once the data is collected you can use it to make dashboards and graphs based on whatever you need.

Obviously, your employees will have this full functionality as well. This works across platforms and it’s consistent so that everyone is looking at the same thing. This way, you’ll find that it’s easier for groups within your company to collaborate towards the goal of keeping costs down based on your current situation.

Analysis

The important thing to make sure you keep a finger on is the trend of the data, and this service is fully capable of doing this as well. You can look at the current trend and then look at the current data so that you can compare what your budget is, how much of it you’ve spent, and the likely place where the trend of spending is heading towards in the future. This way, you can make absolutely sure that you stay within your budget without having to do a lot of hunting around for data.

Instead, it’s all there. The service also allows you to look back on how you’ve done in the past. You can see the previous forecasts against what actually happened, so you can see how accurate is and make adjustments accordingly. That way, you’ll have the most accurate possible version of what expenditures you’ll be making through the cloud for the foreseeable future.

This is obviously of considerable importance if you’re going to make the best business model that you possibly can. That’s why it makes sense to make sure you use the proper services to predict what’s going to happen. The more accuracy you have, the more you’ll have the best of both worlds. After all, you don’t want to go over budget, but you also don’t want to end up allocating too little and end up behind on data. The fewer surprises you have, the better.

Measure Organizational Objectives

If you have a service like this which can tell you, however, all employees, groups, and projects are doing in terms of costs, you’ll be able to encourage employees to hit certain goals, and communicate to them that they have to pay attention to what they are spending in terms of cloud resources.

It’s fairly easy to get overly enthusiastic about using cloud resources and virtual machines in pursuit of a project, after all. By making this data readily accessible to those in your organization, you can help encourage them to check what they’re using versus what they’re accomplishing in order to make sure that costs don’t spike too high in general. In order to further this objective, even more, it’s actually possible within the service to set limits to expenditure limits so that you and others will be alerted whenever the budget is in danger of being breached due to overspending for any particular project or even company-wide. You should have that sort of control if this is something that you genuinely want. This can really help with employee morale and with intra-company communications and effectiveness.

It’s hard to overstate how much it can potentially help your company and its prospects throughout the long-term.

Service Compatibility

If you want to keep your options open for what you use Azure Cost Management for, you have this option through the service. For example, it doesn’t work only through Azure. If you are doing business through Amazon Web Services as well, for example, this is something that you can do if you want. After all, there’s no reason why you can’t use multiple services based on what your needs are. You can use different services for different aspects or even different wings of your country. ACM also works through Google Cloud Platform as well, so you don’t have to worry about there being a proprietary problem here.

Get It Free

Those that partner with Microsoft Azure or are generally customers might have the ability to get the service for free. There’s a link right on the Azure page for this to see if you qualify. Obviously, this will depend on your status within the company and the resources that you’re using, in terms of what you’re signed up for generally. However, it never hurts to go out and check to see if you can get this kind of service without any additional cost. There’s a form for that right on the site, and it’s fairly easy to check that way.

For more information about Cost Management from Azure, including what it can do for your business in both the short and long terms, and including other services from Azure in addition to how they all can work together, please make sure you go ahead and contact us today or at your earliest convenience.