Cloud technologies

04 Jul How to keep your cloud budget under control with Cloud technologies

Posted at 11:15h in Cloud technologies by Simon Spencer

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. With this, there are a lot of considerations that you have to make when regarding the cloud.

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

In this article, we’re going to go over the best practices within Azure to help you save costs when using the cloud. We’ll also go over how an Azure-managed service can help you save costs in the long term by optimising costs.

Best Practices for Reducing Azure Costs (Cloud technologies)

Right-sizing Resources

Right-sizing your resources is the process of analysing your current resource usage and adjusting them to meet your needs perfectly. This will eliminate wasted spend on over-provisioned resources and will help you streamline your costs perfectly.

There are lots of different reasons why you might need to go through your cloud implementation and right-size it. After all, it’s quite common to have virtual machines that have been created with a higher capacity than your needs, and right-sizing fixes this. By right-sizing, you also just make your implementation more efficient and easier to manage as well, by simplifying and streamlining your whole implementation.

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, meaning that you can save lots all around if you can successfully implement reserved instances into your organisation.

There are other benefits to this as well. By using a reserved instance, you lock in your rate — meaning that you have more consistent and predictable budgeting in the long term, as well as the ability to pay flexibly in instalments as well as 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 utilise to ensure that you’re saving costs throughout your cloud implementation —

Cost Analysis: Azure’s Cost Analysis tool will give you insights into your overall Azure spending, and will let you visualise trends and identify anomalies.
Cost Alerts: Cost alerts are proactive alerts that will notify you when your spending reaches certain thresholds, letting you stay in the know about your spending at all times.
Budgets: Azure can track your spending and use predefined budgets for departments, resources, and subscriptions, telling you when you will possibly overrun your budget.
Azure Advisor: As mentioned previously, Azure Advisor is an all-in-one tool that will give you optimisations that you can make to save costs all around.

Taking Advantage of Azure Hybrid Benefit

Azure Hybrid Benefit is a program that exists to help you save money on licenses, letting you 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 for keeping track of your Azure spending. Transparency goes a long way for your organisation, giving a clear view of your spending across various services, departments, and subscriptions.

This means that you can be clear about possible overspending and overprovisioning, and you can track certain parts of your organisation that have the biggest potential for cost savings and optimisation potential.

The Role of Azure Managed Services in Cost Optimisation (Cloud technologies )

A Managed Azure service is a service that will manage your Azure implementation for you. This saves lots of costs as it massively reduces operational overhead — the managed service will handle everything for you, meaning that you don’t need to allocate internal IT resources to take care of it.

Azure Managed Service providers are also experts when it comes to Azure and will be able to ensure that your Azure implementation 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 will allow you to have 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 that you select the right tiers and licenses for your business.

Looking for a Helping Hand with Cloud technologies?

Cloud technologies is an essential technology, with many benefits for your business. However, making sure that your costs are optimised for Cloud technologies and that you’re using these best practices for Azure will ensure that you save costs and don’t haemorrhage 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 that you have everything you need to thrive using the cloud.