How can SMEs tame spiralling cloud costs in Microsoft Azure?

As of 2023, 50 percent of enterprises already have workloads in the public cloud, with seven percent planning to make the leap within the next 12 months. Commanding the second largest share of public cloud services, Microsoft Azure has emerged as one of the market’s most sought after solutions. And for good reason. As well as boasting multi-layered security across data centres, infrastructure, and operations — a holy grail in a time where cyber attacks are at their pique — it’s truly flexible and scalable. From capital expenditure (CAPEX) to operational expenses (OPEX), organisations can flex the service up and down based on evolving requirements. Plus, by fully or partially switching from traditional on-premise infrastructure, Azure’s Softwareas-a-Service (SaaS) model saves on precious space and storage.

It can be easily integrated with existing Microsoft products too.

But technology changes fast. And even the savviest of IT and finance professionals can overlook the value of ‘rightsizing’ their technology stack. Whether not analysing performance and usage frequently enough, or neglecting the process altogether, firms risk over-provisioning their teams with technology that’s no longer fit for purpose, unused, or completely idle — incurring unnecessary costs that could be deployed elsewhere. Additionally, the absence of a well-defined cost optimisation strategy and lack of employee awareness can also contribute to unchecked spending.

Here’s a jargon-free run-down of the ways you can tackle the challenge:

Embrace Azure cost management and billing tools

To gain better visibility and control over your cloud spending, take advantage of the robust cost management and billing tools provided by Microsoft Azure. These tools offer a single, unified view of your business expenditure, with features like cost tracking, budget alerts, and recommendations for optimising resource usage.

By monitoring your spending and setting budget thresholds, you can proactively identify any potential spikes and take necessary actions to keep your expenses in check. Governance policies also help to boost accountability organisationwide, ensuring existing or future resource deployments are accounted for on not only a budgetary level, but a compliance basis too.

Leverage resource sizing and scaling

The pace at which technology is currently expanding means the IT investments you make today may not necessarily be fit-for-purpose six months down the line. There’s likely to even be changes monthon-month, at times. That’s why the ability to scale resources up and down on demand, in line with shifting requirements, is key.

Properly sizing your Azure resources ensures you are only paying for what you need. Regularly analyse your resource utilisation patterns and adjust the sizing accordingly. Utilise features like Azure Auto Scaling to intuitively adjust resource capacity based on predefined conditions, ensuring optimal performance while minimising costs during periods of low demand.

IMPLEMENT COST-EFFECTIVE STORAGE STRATEGIES

Cloud has the power to significantly curb costs for SMEs, irrespective of sector. But storage and product bills can quickly accumulate if not managed efficiently. That’s why assessing your requirements and classifying data based on its access frequency is key. Utilise Azure’s storage tiers — such as hot, cool, and archive — to store information cost-effectively, while ensuring it remains accessible when needed. Implementing a data lifecycle management policy also enables you to automatically transition between storage tiers based on defined rules — optimising costs by keeping frequently accessed data in high-performance storage, and moving less frequently accessed information to lower-cost options.

Utilise Azure Reserved Instances

If you have long-term resource requirements, Azure Reserved Instances (RIs) can help you save significantly on compute costs. This is because they provide discounted pricing for virtual machines and databases when you commit to a specific term. By strategically planning your resource needs and leveraging RIs, you can unlock substantial savings compared to pay-asyou-go pricing. And in today’s uncertain economic climate, where keeping a laser-sharp focus on costs is crucial, every penny truly counts.

Continuous Monitoring And Optimisation

Cost optimisation isn’t a one-time solution. Instead, it requires regular monitoring of Azure resource usage, performance metrics, and cost patterns to identify areas for improvement. Leverage Azure Advisor’s recommendations and other cost optimisation tools to implement best practices and eliminate wasteful spending.

Engage with your development and operations teams to foster a culture of ultimate cost awareness and accountability — encouraging them to make budget-conscious decisions when provisioning and managing resources in the cloud. Engineers, for example, are often hardwired to focus solely on the deliverable on their product roadmap. But by fostering transparency, and implementing visibility through product level profit and loss statements (P&Ls), you can ensure the entire team is educated on the importance of ROI.

How Collaboration Can Help Ease The Headache

The complexity of the cloud can make cost optimisation feel like a time-intensive and headacheinducing process — particularly for enterprises without a designated IT division internally. Specialised Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can prove to be an invaluable extension of your team here. Bringing rich expertise and industry experience, outsourced technical partners can assess your cloud infrastructure and identify areas where cost-saving measures can be implemented, without compromising service delivery. This includes rightsizing virtual machines, scaling resources based on demand, and leveraging RIs for long-term savings. By implementing cost management tools to monitor and track usage patterns, identify cost anomalies, and provide actionable insights for optimisation, they can also implement tagging strategies to allocate costs accurately and enable department-level visibility.

Taking a proactive and holistic approach to managing your future cloud costs in Azure, MSPs can also regularly review and optimise subscriptions, eliminate unused resources, and adjust configurations to align with evolving business needs. It’s all about striking the right balance between performance and cost efficiency in your Azure cloud deployments.

Of course, these services come at a cost, but the benefits of investing in a trusted specialist truly outweigh the ramifications of hiking tech stack costs that often fly under the radar.