Proven Methods for Azure Cloud Cost Optimization

If you are leveraging Azure cloud services, chances are you have experienced its scalability, feasibility and power. But as we all know great powers comes with not only great but greater responsibility. One of the recent phenomena that we are hearing in the market is cloud exit, wherein enterprises are struggling to manage their cloud expenditure and returning to on-prem solutions.  

Managing cloud spending is not an easy task, it can go out of control easily if not monitored and managed efficiently. Azure cloud infrastructure is one of the mostly used cloud solutions. But are you sure you are leveraging it to its most while keeping its cost under control.  

Here we will dive deep into proven methods to keep your cloud cost under control. We will break down this blog into latest trends, proven methods and market updates related to azure cloud cost optimization. The purpose of this blog is to ensure that you leverage azure cloud to its fullest keeping cost under control without impacting the performance.  

Methods to Control Your Azure Cloud Cost 

Azure, like other cloud services, offer various payment models. One of the model is pay-as-you-go model, which sometimes can be both a curse and blessing. If resources are not utilized properly, it will cause you huge loss. 

32% of cloud spend of enterprises is wasted because of underutilized resources or overprovisioned resources – Flexera 2024 

Therefore, Azure cloud cost optimization is not only meant for reducing or controlling the cost but maximizing the performance and increase your ROI. 

Utilize available Azure Cost Management Tools. 

Initially, you should start with having a clear understanding of your cloud expenditure, where money is going. Having clear visibility to your costs will give you an advantage in controlling those unnecessary expenses. There is a tool in Azure, Azure Cost Management + Billing, which helps in analysing, managing and reducing the costs. 

• It helps you monitor the usage across various departments 

• You can set limited budgets and alerts to stop overspending incidents 

• You can get the usage reports to analyze the spending patterns to predict future expenses 

This tool helps you determine services that are eating up your maximum resources unnecessarily. 

Right-Sizing Your Resources 

Overprovisioning is another most common reasons of cloud overspend. Most of the enterprises are paying for the resources they are not fully utilizing. Leaving resources idle cause unnecessary expenditure. 

This situation can be avoided if you analyze your usage requirements thoroughly, check your workloads, and right-size them. If a particular VM is not properly utilized to its fullest, you can downgrade it to small instances. There is a tool called Azure Advisor, which helps analyse the usage of resources and suggests the right size of VM based on the actual requirements of consumption. If there is variable demand, you can choose the auto-scaling feature. It enables the infrastructure to scale up or down automatically based on the needs, which ultimately reduces the costs when VMs are not used. 

Utilize Reserved Instances and Savings Plans 

If you are determined about your long-term usage, you can opt in for 1-3 years of term plan and commit to Azure Reserved Instances or Savings plans that can save up to 72% compared to pay-as-you-go payment plans. It helps in particularly for the services like storage, VMs and databases. 

Database and application tuning 

Usually enterprises migrate their apps from legacy databases to cloud. During their migration, the response to queries might slow and resource – intensive that would add in the overall cost. Therefore, it is recommended that enterprises should optimize their databases leading to faster app performance saving you money.  

Shut Down Idle Resources 

Don’t we forget to shut down idle resources? Yes, enterprises often forget about the resources that are not actively being utilized but Azure continuously charge for them. Azure’s automation scripts help enterprises to automate the process to shut down anything that is idle. 

Trends Shaping Azure Cloud Cost Optimization 

AI Workloads 

Since AI and ML technologies are revolutionizing enterprises in various ways, cloud infrastructure is also empowered with these technologies. Enterprises are pushing their cloud solutions to new limits with AI. However, these AI workloads are quite resource-intensive and can drain your costs. 30% of cloud spending will be attributed to AI workloads by 2025 – Gartner. Enterprises can use spot instances for not very critical workloads to improve AI-related cloud costs. Moreover, Azure also has Batch processing services for AI workloads, reducing costs and optimizing performance. 

Serverless Computing on the Rise 

Another growing trend in the cloud solutions is serverless computing, it enables enterprises run workloads without provisioning servers. In this way enterprises pay only for the compute that they use, making it perfect solution for dynamic workloads. 

It is estimated that the global serverless computing market will reach $24.8 billion by 2026 – Research and Markets. Logic Apps and Azure Functions are some features of Azure Serverless services to help enterprises ensure their cloud usage expenditure are under control. 

Undoubtedly, Azure is a powerful cloud solution offering you everything to keep your business running smoothly but it needs attention on overspending. Azure offers multiple built-in tools to optimize your azure cloud cost and reduce expenses. However, it is always recommended to connect with the Microsoft Azure solutions partners, such as Saxon AI. With the surge in cloud implementation, to keep an eye on cost is critical than ever.