Moving to the Cloud Was Going to Save Me Money?! 

Cloud costs are only somewhat predictable.  You used the Azure cost calculator and the numbers just do not match up.  At the rate things are going you are going to be over your budget in a few months.  Justifying an additional budget is also a costly affair, in that at the least, there will be increased scrutiny of the project. 

Sound familiar?  You are not alone.  On premises, IT costs are predictable, licensing costs, equipment leases, on and offshore salaries.  While some Azure costs are fixed, most are based on some form of consumption.  Consumption is not as easily predictable, particularly when just getting started in Azure.  Failure to control costs can halt or stop your move to Azure. 

Let us explore a few reasons why costs might be growing.  The two largest reasons for cost overruns are closely related, the wrong tool for the right job.  When provisioning an Azure resource, you can easily purchase the problems of tomorrow today by selecting an overpowered product (SKU).  Selecting the most powerful App Service Plan available sounds great, I can provision the resource and give myself room and time to grow without having to scale the app plan in the future.  Akin to this is selecting an Azure resource that can solve the problem, but for which, you can solve with a less expensive resource.  The classic “Lift and Shift” is a fast strategy to Azure but can leave you with a more expensive virtual machine to maintain. 

One of the least intrusive, but effective, solutions for helping to control costs is to create an Azure Budget.  Budgets have several options including targeting subscriptions, resource groups, resource types, and more.  Once a budget has been set there, when thresholds for the budget are exceeded, can take actions such as send an email, call a webhook, even run an automation routine.  One example might be to create a budget for a dev subscription, with notifications at 70% usage, firing an automation to shut down virtual machines at 90%, and disabling the subscription at 120% of budget. 

• Are you costs higher than expected?
• Are environments stagnating in the same subscription?
• Are you dreading an inevitable “down and to the left” conversation from a bloated Azure budget? 

Download the Azure Governance Playbook today to learn how to better manage costs and keep your project and team on track for success!