How FinOps is Transforming Microsoft Cloud Cost Optimization in 2025.

Eggs aren’t the only necessity that eventually starts to cost an arm and a leg.

For businesses that depend on healthy cloud environments to perform crucial functions for the company, Microsoft Cloud products are a must, even in the face of rising product costs. While there are ways to get around a few egg-involved recipes with a few scoops of flaxseed, there’s no “making do without” high-performing platforms like Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Copilot, and more.

In that case, savvy enterprises must come up with other ways to get around a tight budget that is increasingly getting baked into Microsoft licensure and support in larger and larger proportions.

Enter FinOps strategies for Microsoft Cloud. Adopting this framework for financial operations can help your company streamline costs and reduce expenses where it counts. Read on to see how you can apply it to your Microsoft ecosystem and how US Cloud fits perfectly into a financially healthy infrastructure.

FinOps helps teams optimize cloud costs through accountability, visibility, and collaboration.

FinOps is short for “financial operations,” and it indicates a professional cultural practice and operational framework that is built to help teams efficiently manage their cloud costs. It involves six principles:

1. Team collaboration is crucial
2. Cloud business value is a decision driver
3. All individuals take ownership for their cloud usage
4. FinOps data should be made accessible and timely
5. FinOps is driven by a centralized team
6. Variable cost models for the cloud are taken advantage of

In short, the three crucial principles of the FinOps approach are accountability, visibility, and optimization. Merging these three principles means that cloud health is possible for all.

Apply FinOps practices and take control of cloud costs.

Accordingly, cloud-dependent enterprises have long been trapped in the contract renewal process for enterprise agreements (EAs) that end up feeling more compulsory than many procurement leaders would care to admit.

Then, to help solve problems when Microsoft issues inevitably arise, CIOs and CFOs often need to accommodate some form of Microsoft support (either third-party or direct). Since Microsoft Premier is no longer being provided as a new or renewed contract this year, signing up for support means ending up with Microsoft Unified Support—and prices are going up there, too.

There has never been a better time for your company to figure out ways to streamline your cloud costs. To do so, you’ll need your whole team on board—that’s why FinOps is a useful approach.

Optimize Microsoft Cloud costs with FinOps.

While the FinOps approach is meant to be applicable to all cloud ecosystems, let’s talk about what this innovative framework can do for a Microsoft setup specifically. There are four domains to the FinOps cloud cost optimization practice:

1. Understand
2. Quantify
3. Optimize
4. Manage

Understand Your Cloud Usage & Gain Complete Visibility Over Microsoft Cloud Spending

One of the first stops in implementing FinOps practices is to start by figuring out what your cloud usage actually is—you can’t adjust your cloud spend responsibly if you don’t know how things are truly going.

During this stage, your team must evaluate data ingestion, resource allocation, usage analytics, and anomaly management.

Here’s what that can look like from a Microsoft Cloud environment perspective:

• Use Microsoft Cost Management tools and third-party solutions
• Implement real-time cost monitoring for Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365
• Remember to intentionally tag resources for cost allocation.

Right-Size Your Resources: Quantify the Business Value of Microsoft Cloud

Once you have identified your usage and cost data after a thorough investigation of your cloud ecosystem, it’s time to draw connections between that data and any resulting business value.

In this stage, FinOps teams will need to exhibit strong skills in planning, estimating, budgeting, forecasting, benchmarking, and more.

Within a Microsoft Cloud setup, this stage might include:

• Identify underutilized Azure resources and optimize virtual machines.
• Adopt Microsoft 365 licensing best practices to eliminate unused subscriptions.
• Use autoscaling and reserved instances for long-term cost savings.

Cloud Cost Optimization: Leverage Discounts and Licensing Options

At this point in the FinOps implementation process, your team can focus on ensuring that your organization only uses the resources that provide business value. FinOps practitioners may also be evaluating whether resources are efficient in the way of cost, carbon usage, or more traditional IT operational efficiency measures.

Domain capabilities at this stage include cloud architecture, rate optimization, workload optimization, cloud sustainability, cloud sustainability, licensing analysis, and SaaS investment investigation.

For Microsoft Cloud-dependent teams, applicable steps at this stage might be:

• Take advantage of Microsoft Azure Hybrid Benefit and Software Assurance.
• Optimize Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) renewals and contracts.
• Consider third-party Microsoft support to reduce dependency on costly Microsoft Unified Support, especially if your Premier Support contract is expiring soon.

Manage Your Optimized Cloud with Automated Budgeting

After you’ve done the work to clean up your cloud ecosystem, you’ll want to ensure that it remains that way. An optimized cloud won’t be sustainable if it unravels without constant maintenance and supervision.

In this final domain of the FinOps framework, teams will align the entire organization to adopt FinOps and use cloud resources to continue creating value for the company. To do so, FinOps champions will need to engage with cloud policy, governance, and onboarding along with education, enablement, assessment, and more.

Automation is your best friend at this point! While the FinOps team is training the rest of the teams, automated systems can be working to keep things in place. For a Microsoft Cloud-based team, this could include:

• Set up spending alerts and budget thresholds in Azure Cost Management.
• Implement automated shutdown policies for non-production environments.
• Use AI-driven cloud financial management tools.

Automate cloud budgeting with FinOps for long-term cost control.

Seriously Consider Cost-Effective Alternatives for Microsoft Unified Support

Since one of the core evaluations FinOps leaders regarding resources is whether or not resources are purchased at a price as low as possible, it bears pointing out that support for Microsoft issues does NOT have to come from Unified. In fact, high-quality support for Microsoft issues can be cheaper elsewhere.

Unified Support costs won’t be going down anytime soon and will in fact continue to rise. Additionally, any institution still on a Premier Support account can expect to be shuffled over to the Unified model (read: the more expensive version) as soon as their contract ends.

Third-party Microsoft support options can help businesses mitigate these rising costs without feeling trapped by their need for expert support. For example, IT teams generally save 30-50% on their support costs by switching to US Cloud from Unified Support

Optimize Microsoft cloud costs with US Cloud’s expert support.

At US Cloud, our team of Microsoft experts support clients through a range of reactive and proactive services that ensure your team’s FinOps objectives are met. This includes, for example, lowering your Microsoft support costs while maintaining enterprise-grade service.

If you’re looking for Azure cloud cost optimization as you implement the FinOps framework, US Cloud is the place to be. IT leaders who try service through US Cloud notice both short- and long-term gains despite receiving support for a fraction of the cost.

FinOps practices are essential to Microsoft cloud cost optimization for 2025 and beyond. Doing so means implementing cost visibility, automation, and licensing strategies—meaning US Cloud fits right into your FinOps endeavors. Book a call with our team today to see how we can help your team optimize cloud spending. Egg prices will level out again someday…Microsoft Unified Support costs probably won’t.

What is FinOps, and how does it apply to Microsoft cost optimization?

FinOps (Financial Operations) is a framework for managing cloud costs through visibility, accountability, and optimization. For Microsoft environments, it helps enterprises control spending on Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365 by optimizing usage, automating cost controls, and leveraging discounts.

How can enterprises reduce Microsoft Azure costs with FinOps?

To lower Azure cloud costs, organizations should:

• Right-size VMs and scale resources dynamically.
• Use Reserved Instances and Spot VMs for predictable workloads.
• Monitor and eliminate unused resources with automated policies.
• Leverage Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows Server and SQL Server savings.

What are the biggest cost pitfalls in Microsoft Unified Support?

Microsoft Unified Support is both expensive and problem-ridden. Here are some shortcomings of Unified Support:

• Escalating pricing tied to Microsoft spend, not ticket volume.
• Hidden costs for critical escalations and extended support hours.
• No service level agreements (SLAs) for faster response times.
• Limited flexibility compared to independent Microsoft support providers.

How does third-party Microsoft support from US Cloud help with cost savings?

US Cloud offers unparalleled third-party Microsoft support by:

• Cutting Microsoft Unified Support costs by up to 50%.
• Providing faster response times and better SLAs.
• Covering support for Microsoft products, including legacy systems, without forcing costly upgrades.
• Ensuring customers receive help from dedicated engineers, not pooled Microsoft support resources.

Why choose US Cloud for Microsoft support cost optimization?

US Cloud reduces Microsoft support costs while maintaining enterprise-grade service for Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and legacy products. With faster response times and SLA-backed service, we have developed a proven track record of success in integrating with FinOps practices.