Infographic: How to Govern and Manage Cloud Costs

Public cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure deliver unprecedented flexibility for how enterprises work, utilize data, and deliver products. Due to their pricing model, however, it can be easy to lose track of the amount your organization is spending. This risks blowing up your budget.

By utilizing tools such as Azure Cost Management, you can reduce your spend in the cloud from 40%-60% so that your organization is consistently getting the most out of its investment.

Here’s how it works in 4 easy steps.

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Step 1: Analyze

Thoroughly assess your current workloads, data usage, and applications.

Before you can find efficiencies in your cloud spend, you need visibility into where your costs are coming from. That means identifying:

• Usage among your different business units
• Peak usage times
• Inefficiencies in workloads
• Current cost monitoring measures

Step 2: Align

Get your teams aligned with your cost-optimizing goals.

Successfully controlling how much you spend in the cloud requires commitment from your various business units. In particular:

• Business decision makers need to understand cloud usage and spending
• Developers need to work efficiently in order to reduce waste
• Finance departments need to understand that developers require flexibility in how/when VMs are utilized

Step 3: Optimize

Use your assessment to locate opportunities for cost reduction.

In order to find efficiencies, you need to ensure your environment is right-sized. To do that, you must:

• Right-size VMs based on actual usage
• Automate run times for non-production environments
• Identify underused VMs
• Explore Azure discounts

Step 4: Monitor

Deploy processes that continually keep tabs on your cloud usage.

Keeping a watchful eye on your usage, resources, and potential anomalies. Suggested tools include:

• Azure Resource Manager for creating, updating, and deleting resources
• Governance policies to oversee budgets, cost allocations, and chargebacks
• Azure Advisor to implement reservation, rightsize environments, and reduce idle resources
• Azure Cost Analysis for detailed breakdowns of your spend on a continual basis
• Resource automation to reduce VMs usage during off-peak times
• Azure Monitor / Azure Sentinel for monitoring the holistic IT landscape

Working with Redapt

Whether your organization is new to the cloud or already utilizing Azure, our team of experts can help you reduce the costs of your cloud environment.

On average, our clients realize a 40%-60% reduction in spend by working with us. To get started on cutting the costs of your cloud environment, contact one of our experts today.

Click here to contact Redapt today.