Cost Management: How to keep your cloud budget under control

Cloud technologies are an essential part of a business’s technology strategy. After all, its benefits to any company make it a must-have for anyone looking to modernise their organisation. Nevertheless, there is a lot to consider when implementing the cloud. 

One of the most important considerations here is cost. Whilst cloud technologies – once optimised – can save a great amount of money, compared to on-prem solutions, they can also accrue significant costs if not managed correctly. But there are ways to get around this and ensure your costs remain as low as possible.

In this article, Extech Cloud covers best practice with Azure to help you save and optimize costs when in the long term, using the cloud.

Best practice for reducing Azure costs 

Right-sizing resources 

Right-sizing your resources is the process of analysing your current resource usage and adjusting it to meet your needs. This will eliminate overspend on unnecessary resources and help streamline your costs.

There are lots of different reasons why you might need to go through your cloud implementation and right-size it. It’s quite common to have virtual machines with greater capacity than necessary, so it makes sense to right-size to your requirements. This will also make implementation more efficient and easier to manage by simplifying and streamlining the system.

The best way to right-size in Azure is to utilise Azure Advisor. This is a built-in tool that recommends lots of different cost-saving optimisations, which include telling you how to right-size your cloud implementation correctly.

Utilising reserved instances 

Reserved instances are a fixed commitment to use specific Azure resources for an agreed amount of time. By doing this, you can save up to 72% compared to pay-as-you-go and lock in your rate so you have more consistent and predictable budgeting in the long term, as well as the ability to pay flexibly in instalments or in one lump sum.

However, reserved instances aren’t for everyone. They do require a commitment upfront, and you can’t right-size your resources as you go, as you’ll have to pay for a fixed amount of resources every month. This makes reserved instances best for organisations that have a consistent idea of what they’ll need in the future.

Implementing cost management tools 

Azure has a host of cost management tools that you can benefit from:

• Cost analysis: Azure’s Cost Analysis tool will give you insights into your overall Azure spending and let you visualise trends and identify anomalies.
• Cost alerts: Cost alerts are proactive alerts that will notify you when spending reaches certain thresholds, keeping you informed about your spending at all times.
• Budgets: Azure can track your spending and use predefined budgets for departments, resources, and subscriptions – and let you know if you’re about to overrun your budget.
• Azure Advisor: As mentioned previously, Azure Advisor is an all-in-one tool that will give you optimisations to make broad cost-savings.

Taking advantage of Azure Hybrid Benefit 

Azure Hybrid Benefit is a program that exists to help you save money on licenses, allowing you to leverage your on-premises Windows Server or SQL Server licenses. Hybrid Benefit lets you run these on Azure VMs for a much lower cost, with Microsoft estimating savings of up to 85% for SQL servers and 50% for Windows Servers.

By using your existing licenses, you can take advantage of these cost-saving benefits. However, this only applies if you already have these licenses – which means that it’s only applicable to a certain number of organisations.

Monitoring and reporting for transparency 

Monitoring and reporting are vital to keep track of your Azure spending. Transparency goes a long way, giving you a clear view of your spending across various services, departments, and subscriptions.

This keeps you informed about possible overspending and over-provisioning and tracks certain parts of your organisation that have the biggest potential for cost savings and optimisation.

The role of Azure Managed Services in cost optimisation 

A Managed Azure service is a service that manages your Azure implementation for you. The managed service will handle everything, meaning you don’t need to allocate internal IT resources to take care of it and massively reduces operational overheads.

Azure Managed Service providers are also experts when it comes to Azure and will ensure your Azure system is set up correctly to optimise costs for your business. A managed service provider will also patch and update your environment, meaning that your Azure environment will always be up-to-date and running effectively.

Working with a managed service provider gives you access to a wealth of knowledge and expertise that you can leverage to make sure that you make the right decisions. With this, a service provider can ensure you select the right tiers and licenses for your business.

Looking for a helping hand? 

The cloud is an essential technology, with many benefits for your business. However, making sure your costs are optimised and that you’re using best practices for Azure to save costs in the long term.

If you’re looking to improve your Azure implementation – or to get started with the cloud – and need a helping hand, reach out to us today. Our experts are here to help and ensure you have everything you need to thrive using the cloud.

Get in touch with us now and see how we can help.