Cloud costs are rising, and organizations are adopting FinOps teams and tools to manage their cloud spending more effectively. One frequently compared toolset is Azure Cost Management and Azure Advisor, embedded directly into the Azure portal. However, many businesses also turn to FinOps consulting or other paid tools for a more tailored approach. In this blog, we’ll explore the differences between these options and help you understand which approach best fits your needs.

Azure Cost Management: A High-Level Overview

Azure Cost Management and Azure Advisor provide tools to track and optimize spending within the Azure portal. These features offer:

• Cost Analysis: Visualize and understand your spending patterns.
• Budgets and Alerts: Set spending limits and get notified when thresholds are exceeded.
• Recommendations: Automated cost-saving tips, such as right-sizing VMs, identifying zombie resources, and suggesting Reserved Instances or Savings Plans.

While these tools provide helpful insights, they offer generalized recommendations with limited transparency. Businesses often encounter challenges, such as:

• Lack of detailed information behind recommendations.
• Incorrect savings estimates for stopped VMs.
• Reserved Instances (RI) savings calculated inaccurately.
• Absence of Hybrid Benefit suggestions.
• Savings Plans recommendations provided only at the subscription level, without details on individual VMs.

To unlock more accurate savings, companies may need to integrate additional data, including:

• Storage Costs: Pricing varies by storage type (e.g., HDD, SSD).
• Compute Resources: VM costs depend on workload type (e.g., General Purpose, Compute Optimized).
• Licensing: Costs differ between Windows and Linux VMs.
• Networking: Data transfer and load balancer charges.
• Reserved Instances (RI): Savings with 1- or 3-year commitments.
• Spot VMs: Significant discounts, but availability is limited.
• Geographic Regions: Prices vary based on the VM’s location.
• vCores and Resource Groups: Essential metrics to track usage accurately.

Example Challenges with Azure Cost Management:

• Inconsistent recommendations across VMs and subscriptions.
• Presented savings opportunities for stopped VMs.
• Lack of prioritized savings insights to focus on the most impactful changes.

FinOps Consulting: A Personalised, Data-Driven Approach

FinOps consulting provides a deeper and more customized solution to cloud cost management. FinOps experts dive into the data to offer precise recommendations that are transparent and actionable.

Key Areas FinOps Consultants Focus On:

• Disk Optimization: Identifying and fixing storage inefficiencies.
• Azure Hybrid Benefit: Leveraging existing licenses to cut costs.
• Region Optimization: Allocating resources to the most cost-effective regions.
• VM Adjustments for RI Eligibility: Fine-tuning virtual machines to qualify for Reserved Instances.
• Tracking Savings: Monitoring and reporting achieved savings.
• Prioritized Savings: Focusing on the most impactful cost-saving opportunities first.

Why FinOps Consultants Add Value

Unlike Azure’s built-in tools, FinOps consultants offer detailed insights that allow businesses to act with confidence. They use a data-driven approach to deliver personalised recommendations, ensuring that companies optimise their cloud environment while avoiding unnecessary expenses.

Azure Cost Advisor

Azure Cost Management Power-Bi: FinOps Consulting

Which Option Is Best for You?

Azure Cost Management and Azure Advisor are great starting points for monitoring and optimising cloud costs. However, if you need more precise, actionable insights and tailored strategies, FinOps consulting may offer better long-term value. Consultants can help you maximize savings by uncovering hidden opportunities, prioritising the most impactful actions, and providing ongoing tracking to ensure sustained cost efficiency.

Looking to maximize your cloud savings? Contact us to learn how FinOps consulting can unlock the full potential of your cloud environment.