Microsoft Azure Cost Management: How to Slash Spend by 30%.

Your Azure costs are growing again, but you don’t have to resign yourself to watching your monthly bill rise higher and higher. There’s a way to get a handle on your Azure spend again—really. The best part is that, if Azure cost management is done right, you could pay up to 30% less per year.

The experts at US Cloud are skilled at guiding you through industry best practices (as well as the tips and tricks you may not know about) to help you stop spending so much on Azure. Read on for a glimpse into how to reduce your Azure bills and stay until the end to see how US Cloud can help you slash that Azure bill.

Azure's cloud pricing options: pay-as-you-go versus reserved instances.

While your Azure price depends on what type of plan suits your company best, many businesses opt for a pay-as-you-go model. That means that your Azure cost is calculated based on how much is stored in your cloud environment. If you want to know more about how that cost comes together, you can consult Microsoft Azure’s Pricing Calculator.

Some businesses find a reserved instances (RI) model to be the best approach.

In this case, an account holder commits to a one- or three-year plan for products in the Azure environment. This is often accompanied by a discount, which can be helpful! However, if your Azure prepayment balance doesn’t cover the cost of what you actually used on your account, you’ll be billed the overage.

In either case: it pays to run a tight ship within your Azure environment.

There are many ways to optimize your Azure account so that your costs are within your desired budget. Below you’ll find a collection of tips to help you make informed decisions about how to begin the cost optimization process for your cloud environment.

Evaluate Your Microsoft Azure Plan Configuration

This tip depends on which plan you’re starting out with when you approach this strategy. If you’re on a pay-as-you-go version of Azure but your costs are ballooning, an option for you is to switch to the RI account model.

Doing so would automatically apply a discount to your service. Furthermore, if you plan on keeping Azure around for the foreseeable future, reserving instances under a contract may actually make more sense for your company.

However, if the RI model prepayment is not feasible at your company, then a pay-as-you-go strategy with an optimized cloud environment may be the way to go.

Furthermore, your storage tier should be right-sized for you. There are multiple storage tiers to consider, so picking the correct one will offer you the most cost-effective storage solution.

Rightsizing will impact your total Microsoft Azure cost.

Implement Data Lifecycle Management Systems

In order to ensure that your Azure storage isn’t housing large amounts of unnecessary data, setting up a data lifecycle management system to help your team delete or archive unused content. This prevents inactive data from being one of the culprits behind your growing Azure costs.

Resize or Shut Down Underutilized Instances

On Azure, the more instances you store, the more it costs to keep your account running. Cut down on your virtual machine (VM) spend by evaluating all of the instances in your Azure environment for whether or not they should be resized or shut down altogether.

Cleaning up and eliminating underused assets can go a long way in your Azure account. Some of our clients have cut their monthly costs by over $100,000. That’s over a million dollars saved annually for the same services.

Know the Difference Between Reserved Instances and Azure Spot Virtual Machines

Spot virtual machines in Azure offer spare capacity for short-term needs. These have a higher potential for interruption. Reserved instances can be used for long-term commitments to specific VM sizes.

Knowing this difference can help you and your team distinguish between the instances you know will be integrated into your Azure environment needs.

Schedule Automatic Shutdowns for Non-Essential Services

If any part of your workload doesn’t need to run 24/7, consider setting an automatic shutdown schedule. This strategy helps you reduce costs outside of working hours.

Consider Autoscaling Options for Cloud Cost Optimization

Azure’s autoscaling feature implements an automatic system that scales applications and resources based on demand. For example, an application may require extra resources to satisfy service-level agreements (SLAs) and maintain at the desired performance level.

However, once demand for that application reduces, this system is designed to de-allocate those resources to minimize operating costs on your end.

This might mean vertical scaling (increase or decrease in resource capacity) or horizontal scaling (addition or removal of resource instances). In both scenarios, this autoscaling option is meant to help your team trim resource allocation without having to maintain it manually.

Leverage the Azure Hybrid Benefit for Decreased Costs

If you have on-premises servers, you can take advantage of this benefit! With the Azure Hybrid Benefit, you’ll have the option to apply your Azure licenses directly to your existing Windows server or SQL server. Run workloads in Azure at a reduced cost and combine this strategy with other tips from this list and you should already be saving yourself a generous amount on operating costs!

Using an on-site server to power cloud processes is a recent technique, and an innovation that powers the latest AI successes at the moment.

Investigate as Many Cost-Efficient Strategies as Possible

There is no single way to succeed when it comes to Azure cost management. You might be able to take advantage of some — or all — of the tips included in our list above!

VBox's Azure cost analyzer identifies 47% potential savings.

Another way to think about this is to make sure you exhaust all of your options for cost savings so that your optimized Azure plan operates in the most efficient way.

Consider Azure Support Plans

If you need more support with your journey to a fully optimized Azure environment, companies like US Cloud (for when things need optimized fixing) and Parex Technology (for proactive solutions to prevent system issues) offer service options to help you implement as many methods as possible to tackle your cloud challenges.

In just eight weeks, US Cloud’s Azure Excellence program can help you explore your options for optimizing your Azure account using as many solutions as we believe will help you make as much of a financial difference as possible. On average, our customers save 30% on their annual expenditure.

Save up to 30% annually with US Cloud Azure cost optimization.

Azure Excellence Eliminates Extraneous Cloud Storage

Our experts have the industry knowledge about how to pare down your most essential cloud-based data, instances, subscriptions, and VMs. For example, one client asked us to review 81 instances in their Azure cloud. Of those, 28 of them were unnecessarily costing more on the cloud.

US Cloud Supports Your Cost Optimization Goals

While our clients save on average 20-30% of their operating costs after implementing our cost optimization recommendations, overall savings can be more than that. After implementing the Azure Excellence bundle from US Cloud, one of our European clients discovered savings of over £100,000 per month (that’s over $127,000 per month). In other words, in just an eight-week period of implementing our suggestions, this team saved over $1.6 million per year.

Face Your Azure Optimization as a Practice—Not a Single Issue

Maintaining a healthy and efficient Azure environment is not a one-time task. Consistent monitoring of your cloud storage and operations is crucial for evaluating your spend and cutting costs where possible.

Knowing where your budget makes a difference (or doesn’t) means that you could be saving thousands of dollars without knowing it. That happened to our client who was previously spending $131,000 on Azure per year. After we initiated our cost optimization practices, we discovered that the same client’s actual usage equated only about $0.56.

Prepare Your Azure Environment for an Optimized Future

At the end of the Azure Excellence program, we provide all customers with a final report containing:

• Summary of the actions taken to optimize your Azure account
• Outline of the savings achieved through US Cloud’s service
• Additional recommendations for cost optimization

Contact us for more information today or book a call to get started. We’re excited to help you and your company save significantly through cloud cost optimization!

Is there any way to save money on my Microsoft Azure account?

Absolutely. US Cloud offers businesses several options for making the most of your Azure account without paying the most for it.

How do you control costs in Azure?

Check our post for tips about how to optimize your cloud costs, but some general optimization concepts include eliminating unnecessary data and instances from your cloud while optimizing your resources appropriately. US Cloud can help!

What is the difference between cost optimization and a pricing calculator in Microsoft Azure?

A pricing calculator will help you estimate how much your Microsoft Azure service will cost under predicted circumstances. Cost optimization is a strategy implemented after costs have been accrued and need to be brought under control once again.