Knowing where your cloud costs are going why can be an almost impossible task without the right software.
According to PwC’s Cloud Business Survey, just under half of business leaders cite measuring value as a major barrier to achieving cloud ROI despite 59% of their organisations using over three tools to manage and optimize their cloud.
The problem is that organisations that only use cloud-native technologies – such as microservices, containers and Kubernetes – don’t have full visibility into their costs, leading to overspending and mismanagement of company assets.
Cloud cost management has become an essential tool for organizations looking to gain insight into cloud resource usage, and budgets allocated to cloud services.
What is cloud cost management?
Cloud Cost Management is the practice of optimizing the cost of cloud services by identifying and eliminating unnecessary expenses, improving resource utilization, and negotiating favourable pricing terms.
As businesses increasingly rely on cloud computing to support their operations, effective cost management becomes crucial to maintain profitability and maximize the value of their cloud investments.
Implementing strategies such as resource optimization, cost allocation, and utilizing cloud cost management tools enables organizations to achieve significant savings and optimize their cloud investments.
What are cloud cost management tools?
Cloud Cost Management Tools are software applications designed to help organizations track, analyze, and optimize their cloud spending. These tools provide visibility into cloud consumption by tracking usage across different departments, services, and projects.
They also help companies identify areas of overspending, unused resources, and opportunities for cost savings, offering detailed insights and reports to help organizations manage their cloud costs.
Beyond simple monitoring, cloud cost management tools often include automation features that enable organizations to optimize their spending in real time.
For example, they may automatically scale down unused resources, suggest more cost-effective service plans, or alert teams to unusual spending patterns.
These tools also provide forecasting capabilities that help businesses anticipate future expenses and budget accordingly. By implementing cloud cost management tools, organizations can improve their financial efficiency, allocate resources more effectively, and ensure that their cloud strategy aligns with their overall business objectives.
Features of cloud cost management tools
1. Cost Visibility and Transparency
Cloud cost management tools provide detailed insights into how resources are being utilized across various cloud services and departments. This visibility allows organizations to track where their money is going and better understand their consumption patterns. It helps businesses avoid unexpected charges and identify areas where costs can be reduced.
2. Cost Optimization
These tools often come with features that identify inefficiencies, such as underutilized resources, idle instances, or over-provisioned services. By optimizing resource allocation and usage, companies can reduce wastage and lower overall cloud spending. Some tools even offer automated recommendations or real-time adjustments to ensure optimal performance at the lowest cost.
3. Budgeting and Forecasting
Cloud cost management software enables organizations to set budgets, track spending against these budgets, and forecast future cloud expenses based on current usage trends. This helps finance teams plan better and allocate funds more accurately, avoiding budget overruns and ensuring that resources are available for critical operations.
4. Automated Alerts and Monitoring
Many tools include real-time alerts that notify teams when spending exceeds predefined thresholds or when usage patterns deviate from expected norms. This helps organizations respond to potential cost issues quickly, minimizing waste and preventing unexpected billing surprises.
5. Multi-Cloud Management
For organizations that use multiple cloud providers, cloud cost management software offers centralized monitoring and management across various platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud). This helps streamline cost control efforts and allows for better decision-making by comparing the costs and benefits of using different cloud services.
Best Cloud Cost Management Tools and Software
In this list, we’ve compiled our picks for the best cost management tools and software solutions organizations can use to allocate spending and make the most of their cloud investments.
CloudAdmin
At the start of our list, we have CloudAdmin, an NYC-based cloud cost solution provider priding on simple and direct dashboards to make managing cloud spending a breeze. CloudAdmin tracks cloud usage and regularly offers suggestions for rightsizing servers or converting them into reserved instances. It allows users to easily allocate server instances to teams and carefully track the budget of each instance.
One of the standard features of CloudAdmin is its carefully filtered data feed, which extracts critical information about cloud spending to save staff time going through heaps of information. If spending crosses a defined line, the tool also has automated alerts integrated with email or other common communication tools so that IT teams can take action.
Flexera One
Flexera One is a cloud management suite designed for organisations with highly complex hybrid environments. Its Cloud Management Platform (CMP) provides an array of capabilities for discovery, template-based provisioning, orchestration and automation, allowing companies to optimise costs across multiple public and private clouds as well as virtual and bare-metal servers. The tool also offers multi-cloud accounting for tracking spending with elaborate reporting broken down by team and project.
The tool has multiple functionalities similar to other cloud management solutions, such as complete cost visibility, cost anomalies alerting and cost monitoring, as well as a few additional ones, such as its cost allocation by centre or team. feature. This allows cloud governance teams to tag cloud resources, track cloud budgets, and spending, and enable invoice reconciliation and allocation to cost centres with specific markups and markdowns on cloud costs.
Pyracloud
A product of Software One, Pyracloud is a single platform that allows stakeholders to track software licenses and cloud subscriptions and view entire on-premises and cloud software estate with transparency. It provides users with the tools needed to ensure their organisation’s software estate is continuously cost-optimised and aligned with business goals and objectives.
Its single platform allows users to digitise their software supply chain, manage contracts and track, control and predict cloud spending across, multiple cloud providers. It provides a defined catalogue of approach software publishers and available licensing scenarios in nearly 90 countries and over a dozen currencies, allowing organisations to effectively digitise procurement processes from demand through delivery. Its easy-to-use platform simplifies budgeting, spend tracking and chargeback of cloud costs to an organisation’s business cost centres.
Cloud Custodian
Cloud Custodian is an open-source cloud security, governance and management platform that allows users to easily create a well-managed cloud infrastructure that’s both secure and cost-optimised. A product of Capital One, the tool allows users can define rules to optimise spending costs, automatically enforcing the rules defined by the user. The platform supports managing AWS, Azure, and GCP public cloud environments.
One of the standout features of Custodian is its simple DSL. Users can build complex workflows or simple queries, and millions of policies using the simple and easy-to-read coding language. It also has unique cost management features such as the ability to set off-hours to turn off resources when they’re not being used – allowing the user to easily cut spending.
Google Cost Management
The first native tool on our list, Google Cost Management helps companies organise cloud resources, gain visibility into current cost trends and forecasts, and drive clear accountability for costs across cloud resources. Google has made a lot of improvements over the years to its cost report user interface, allowing users to easily analyse and report on the data. By dynamically filtering, sorting and grouping various line items, organisations can understand the cost of each invoice entry.
Though this data needs to be exported externally to CSV and BigQuery and pulled from there, doing so opens the door to other cost-optimising solutions such as Google Cloud Platform’s Data Studio and other third-party solutions. Without an external tool, organisations will need to label or tag projects to identify them specifically, which can be time-consuming and ineffective for larger teams.
Azure Cost Management
Microsoft's Azure Cost Management tool helps companies make the most of their cloud environment and implement financial governance. It provides a single platform for organisations to drive organisational accountability by implementing governance policies that focus on visibility, accountability, and optimisation.
Azure provides detailed cost analysis, enabling organisations to manage cloud costs across all their clouds with a single, unified view while accessing rich operational and financial insights to make informed decisions Azure users can manage costs across Azure and AWS from a single location, getting insights based on data from both clouds to simplify cost management processes. Since it’s native to Microsoft Azure, the tool is free to use for any company using the cloud service. 70 per cent of Azure’s enterprise clients also use the cost-saving tool.
Densify
Densify builds a collection of tools for managing cloud infrastructure by allowing users to juggle containers and VMWare instances. It keeps precise, meticulous records of cluster load and uses this data to scale up and down quickly. Densifiy’s optimisers focus on cloud resources including instances, Kubernetes clusters, and VMware machines, an approach which is sales improves scaling by 30 per cent.
Densifiy’s additional FinOps tool generates extensive reports to help application developers and bean counters manage their spending while also improving performance. It also allows organisations to track an array of different machines at the same time to ensure rightsised instance allocation.
AWS Cost Explorer
Amazon Web Services offers a range of different tools for cost management within the enterprise, but its AWS Cost Explorer takes the cake for optimising cost on the cloud. The native product of AWS collects and visualises real-time logs, metrics and event data with automated dashboards to streamline companies’ infrastructure and application maintenance. It can be seamlessly integrated with over 70 different AWS services to allow for simplified monitoring and scalability. The tool also works on-premises and across a variety of different clouds.
Cost Explorer includes a default monthly report to help organisations visualise the spending and usage associated with their teams’ five budget-draining AWS services, giving a detailed breakdown of all services in a table view. This is great for finance teams who require a high-level overview of costs and potential saving opportunities across their cloud infrastructure. The tool also provides regular recommendations for optimising costs and usage, making it a great option for smaller companies wishing to start their cloud budget optimisation on a small scale.
CloudCheckr
What makes CloudCheckr different from other cloud cost management solutions on this list is its focus on controlling cloud costs through proactive security conterols. Its CloudCheckr CMx platform provides visibility and insight to reduce costs and optimize cloud resources as well as help users maintain the security and compliance of their cloud environment. The tool makes up part of NetApp’s Spot constellation for cloud management, tracking standard spending events, such as consumption, forecasting and the rightsizing of instances.
Like many other tools, Cloudcheckr offers cost visualisation, allowing users to easily create reports and share dashboards to gain insight into key spending trends. It boasts a simple and single platform that aligns SecOps, InfoSec, DevOps and FinOps, allowing users to manage cost, resources security posture and services all in one place. The platform also provides customisable tools, helping organisations differentiate their service offerings and improve profits.
Cloud Health by VMware
Our top pick is Cloud Health, a cloud cost management tool by VMWare that delivers high levels of intelligent insights to help companies optimise their cloud costs, improve governance, and build a stronger cloud security posture. The cosy accounting module stands out for its endless choice of great features for teams of all sizes. Its FlexOrgs, feature, for instance, helps align cloud data with business objectives to provide control of user access and sharing.
Cloud Health also boasts phenomenal budget management and forecasting features, which allow teams to configure budgets to visualise costs for the year in advance and compare these predictions with spending as the year progresses. Financial managers and development teams can delve deep into these forecasts to focus on specific applications or services. This allows companies to integrate cloud costs with business metrics and key performance indicators to understand the connection between computational costs and business objectives.
