Wrestling with Azure Cost Management? Here’s How an MSP Can Help

Azure Cost Management is complex enough that it’s an entirely separate part of managing and maintaining Azure. As with most cloud solutions, Azure has specialized costing depending on the services and features you need and the resources that you use. Azure Cost Management can be arcane to many, and can quickly spiral out of control. A Microsoft Azure management team can help.

What is Azure Cost Management?

An organization’s Azure costs are based on the resources the organization uses. It can be difficult for an organization to analyze its costs because the costs occur on-the-fly. Azure Cost Management is a utility that’s intended to provide additional transparency to the cost management process. Through Azure Cost Management, companies can analyze their costs and create and manage their budgets.

Here are some major features of Azure Cost Management:

• Analyzing organizational costs. You can review your current cost trends to see if they are increasing, and break them down to weekly, monthly, or quarterly costs. Azure can become a major overhead cost for businesses that rely upon their technological infrastructure and their data. Even a small change in business processes or technology could cause a sudden spike in costs, and an organization that is not prepared for this could find themselves facing a major unexpected bill.
• Budgeting for better management. Your Azure Cost Management system can help in preventing certain cost limits or spending-related thresholds from being passed. As you get closer to these budgets, you’ll be notified that you’re approaching them; this gives you enough time to change your approach to one that is more reliable and sustainable.
• Recommendations for improvement. Azure Cost Management goes further than just analysis and identifies areas of potential improvement for the organization. These recommendations for improvement are simple and automatically generated, but they can still be a starting point for those who are concerned about their resource usage.
• Data exports. Data can be exported from Azure Cost Management so that it can be further analyzed through external systems. This is especially important for organizations that are managing all their tech overhead and other information through a centralized location.

But even with Azure Cost Management, companies may want to engage with a managed service provider to identify their resource needs. Managed service providers can take a look at the Azure system as a whole, as well as Azure Cost Management, to help an organization understand their data usage.

Why Is It Important to Get Help?

Even with the Azure Cost Management utility, it’s extremely easy for Azure costs to spiral out of control. Without streamlining and optimization, it’s possible for an organization to be using far greater levels of resources than it truly needs. MSPs work to provide important first line communication with an organization, translating the reports that the organization acquires through Azure Cost Management.

Here’s how a partner can help:

• Alerting your organization when you’ve exceeded your budgets. An MSP will be able to review your Azure account and let you know when you’re exceeding your budget, so you can address the problems before your costs skyrocket. While you may know that you’re approaching your budget, you might not know what to do about it. An MSP can help.
• Helping your organization with better data analysis. An MSP can explain your analysis and recommendations to you, so you know how to change your system to suit your desired resource usage. Azure Cost Management will make general suggestions for your organization to follow, but it is the MSP who will ultimately implement it.
• Enabling easy-to-read reporting. An MSP can make it possible for you to review your own pay-as-you-go servicing, so you can see the costs that you’re accruing as they accrue.
• Integrating data into other solutions. Through the Azure REST API, MSPs are able to integrate and export data into other solutions, for better control and analysis.

While Azure Cost Management does give you some basic information about your costs, it can’t give you detailed information about what you need to do to reduce your costs. An MSP will understand your company and its usage, and therefore will be able to give you knowledgeable and experienced suggestions regarding how to best optimize your Azure-related expenses.

Microsoft Azure is the backbone of many organizations today, including a large percentage of Fortune 500 companies. But that doesn’t mean that its billing and services can’t be improved upon. A managed service provider will help you control your costs, so that you can leverage the power of Azure without over-spending. Contact the experts at Red River today to find out more.

About Red River

Red River brings together the ideal combination of talent, partners and products to disrupt the status quo in technology and drive success for business and government in ways previously unattainable. Red River serves organizations well beyond traditional technology integration, bringing 25 years of experience and mission-critical expertise in security, networking, analytics, collaboration, mobility and cloud solutions. To learn more, visit redriver.com