How to optimize your Azure cloud costs
Optimize Azure
Always in control of your Azure costs
Any organization working with Microsoft Azure (*details) knows that it is wise to keep a close eye on exactly what they are using as Azure services are charged on a per-use basis, either as an upfront commitment or (more often) as pay-as-you-go. Costs can increase quickly and unnoticed.
The crucial starting point to gaining control over your Azure spend is to obtain and understand the right usage insights as these provide input for both your cost governance and optimization efforts. By analyzing consumption and applying licensing expertise both commercial and technical optimizations can be calculated. Lastly, it’s important to constantly stay alert to new optimization opportunities so you always remain in control of your costs.
This is exactly what Nebula’s Optimize Azure excels at! Leveraging Nebula’s independence and countless years of licensing expertise, Optimize makes sure you are always in control of your Azure costs.
*What's included:
The Microsoft Azure cloud includes all cloud products that are billed as Azure consumption. Meanwhile, Azure products billed as user subscriptions, such as Azure Active Directory Premium and Azure Information Protection, are classified as M365 cloud products and are therefore part of Optimize M365. Marketplace costs are currently not targeted for optimization.
Optimize Azure in a nutshell
- Analyzing actual consumption
- Providing cost breakdown
- Showing in-depth usage insights
- Simplifying licensing complexity
- Revealing commercial & technical optimization opportunities
The Optimize Azure tool offers four key pages:
- Dashboard; a monitoring overview that helps you understand what is happening with your cloud usage and spend
- Amortized cost over time; determines and shows the development of the monthly amortized** costs
- Commercial optimization; shows the optimization opportunities through licensing improvements
- Technical optimization; shows possible optimization opportunities from technical improvements
1. Dashboard
This overview page shows you your key savings opportunities in multiple ways. The dashboard explicates your total actual spend and amortized** annual cost, followed by your saving opportunity. The saving opportunity is the sum of the commercial and technical optimizations identified. Furthermore, the dashboard displays a detailed timeline showing the month over month changes to your Azure spend, so you can keep track of your spending and optimization efforts over time. This is a detailed monthly breakdown of the amortized annual cost shown above. By paying attention to and actively implementing our optimization suggestions, your costs should start trending downwards. As we always review the entire Azure cloud spend, you might see a spike in your consumption if you have just implemented any new projects. Next, to provide a clear indication of where you can achieve the highest savings from an Azure Services perspective, the dashboard shows a graph with the potential savings broken down per saving category (as currently identified by us), reflecting the current spend per category and the calculated optimized spend. Finally, to give you a clear call to action, our "saving potential per saving category" overview details where your saving potential lies, defined by our predetermined saving categories that currently apply to your environment.
2. Amortized cost over time
On this page we provide an in-depth overview of your amortized (**details) Azure spend over time, giving you a clear insight in what your Azure consumption is at any specific time over the last year. These detailed insights will help you to better understand your position and to make predictions of future use, which may be very significant when you need to negotiate commitment plans or future pricings.
2. Amortized cost over time
On this page we provide an in-depth overview of your amortized (**details) Azure spend over time, giving you a clear insight in what your Azure consumption is at any specific time over the last year. These detailed insights will help you to better understand your position and to make predictions of future use, which may be very significant when you need to negotiate commitment plans or future pricings.
3. Commercial optimization
The commercial optimization page is used to display certain programmatic saving categories, which we continuously update in our tool to reflect Microsoft’s latest licensing models. We indicate per line-item which ones may not have been implemented to their full potential. As Microsoft allows you to sign up for and choose either a one- or a three-year reserved instance, we calculate the total savings you might benefit from for either of these timeframes. Whatever term you choose, we recommend you make the changes as soon as possible to start saving on your Azure consumption.
4. Technical optimization
The technical optimization page suggests an ever-increasing array of technical changes you can make to your subscriptions to benefit from more cost-effective solutions. This page shows each Meter Category you can save on (i.e., VM, storage, database), which specific products are involved, the optimization category and the instance name as well as a detailed description of the recommended action to take and of course the total savings. With this information, you have everything you need to prioritize and make technical changes to effectively optimize your Azure spend.
4. Technical optimization
The technical optimization page suggests an ever-increasing array of technical changes you can make to your subscriptions to benefit from more cost-effective solutions. This page shows each Meter Category you can save on (i.e., VM, storage, database), which specific products are involved, the optimization category and the instance name as well as a detailed description of the recommended action to take and of course the total savings. With this information, you have everything you need to prioritize and make technical changes to effectively optimize your Azure spend.
** "Amortized" clarification:
Amortization is the process of breaking down one-time costs into periodic costs. It helps us to gain a clear insight into the cost allocation, which in turn helps to successfully optimize costs. For reservations, the entire reservation amount is billed in advance by default, while the reservation costs are in effect for the duration of the reservation. The entire amount of the reservation is settled as actual costs in the first month, while with amortized costs this amount is evenly distributed over the entire period (pro-rated).