16 Jul 2024 | Posted By Techzert

Cloud Cost Management Tools Explained

Gone are the days when cloud servers were touted as costing mere pennies. Today, receiving the monthly cloud bill can send CFOs through the roof. Developer teams are realizing that seemingly small costs can quickly accumulate, necessitating greater fiscal discipline.

In this buyer’s guide, we explore:

What cloud cost management tools entail
Key considerations when selecting cloud cost management tools
Leading vendors in the cloud cost management space
Essential reading on optimizing cloud spending

What are Cloud Cost Management Tools?

Cloud cost management is a critical business practice focused on monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing an organization’s cloud computing expenses. These tools offer enhanced visibility into cloud resource usage, helping to identify and eliminate unused or over provisioned services. They also aid in predicting future cloud costs, facilitating more accurate budget forecasts.

How Cloud Cost Management Tools Help

These tools track all expenditures associated with an organization’s cloud usage, allocating costs to respective teams. This accountability ensures that teams responsible for resource-intensive features are aware of their impact on costs, promoting more efficient resource allocation. Conversely, teams operating within allocated limits can be acknowledged for their efficient use of cloud resources.

What to Look for in Cloud Cost Management Tools

For smaller teams with straightforward configurations, using the default cloud cost management services provided by their chosen cloud vendor may suffice. These services now include improved accounting tools and proactive alarms to prevent bill escalations.

However, as cloud commitments grow, standalone cloud cost management tools become more appealing. These tools are designed to integrate with multiple cloud platforms and consolidate data into unified reports for easier analysis. They may also monitor on-premises infrastructure, allowing comparisons between renting cloud resources and building dedicated server rooms.

Many cloud cost management tools are part of broader suites that address not only cost monitoring but also security and other governance rules. Some tools initially designed for enterprise architecture surveys or software governance now incorporate robust cost tracking capabilities, providing opportunities for cost savings while managing other management tasks effectively.

The Benefits of Cloud Cost Management

Cloud cost management offers several interconnected, direct, or hidden advantages, including:

Accurate Forecasting, Planning, and Budgeting: Enables precise estimation and management of cloud expenses.
Empowerment of Engineers: Helps engineers understand and manage the financial impact of their decisions and work.
Optimization Opportunities: Identifies areas in software architecture that can be restructured for increased profitability, crucial as SaaS companies strive to maintain margins.
Profitability Insights: Pinpoints least profitable technologies, customers, and projects within the cloud environment.
Operational Adjustments: Guides decisions on pricing adjustments, feature decommissioning to reduce costs, or project prioritization for profitability.
Utilization of Cost-saving Measures: Evaluates and optimizes load balancing, autoscaling, capacity reservations, and cloud savings programs like AWS Savings Plans.
Service Optimization: Determines the most suitable cloud services for each application, ensuring efficient resource allocation and cost-effectiveness.

Leading Vendors for Cloud Cost Management Tools

Cloud cost management tools vary widely, ranging from integrated components within major cloud platforms to independent standalone solutions. While CIO organizations should consider offerings from their existing cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, it's also beneficial to evaluate independent tools. These tools provide unbiased insights, ensuring comprehensive cost management strategies.

Below is a list of top cloud cost tracking and analysis tools. The market is rapidly expanding as enterprise managers prioritize controlling cloud expenditures and optimizing operations across global server instances:

Turbonomic
Densify
Datadog
NetApp CloudCheckr
CloudHealth by VMware
Azure
Harness
Flexera
Yotascale
Nutanix

Each of these tools offers powerful features to effectively govern and optimize cloud spending, catering to the diverse needs of modern enterprises managing extensive cloud infrastructures worldwide.

IBM Turbonomic - Best Cloud Cost Management Tool

IBM utilizes Turbonomic to implement an AI-powered solution that aligns application deployment with infrastructure based on demand. This tool automates the starting, stopping, and movement of applications in response to fluctuations in demand. Data informing these decisions is stored in a data warehouse to train AI for future decision-making.

The latest version of IBM Turbonomic introduces a new dashboard and reporting framework leveraging Grafana. Key features include:

Full-stack integrated graphics for comprehensive insights into application demand and cost.
Automation of resource allocation, relieving engineering teams from manual tasks.

IBM Turbonomic enhances operational efficiency by dynamically adjusting resources to optimize performance and cost-effectiveness across applications and infrastructure.

Densify: Optimizing Cloud Infrastructure

Densify offers a suite of cloud cost management tools designed to manage cloud infrastructure, balancing containers and VMware instances efficiently. According to Densify, the key to optimal cluster management is maintaining precise records of workload data, which informs agile scaling operations. Their optimizers target cloud resources such as instances, Kubernetes clusters, and VMware machines, boasting a 30% improvement in scaling efficiency.

Key features of Densify include:

Load Tracking: Ensures appropriate allocation of right-sized instances based on machine workloads.
Comprehensive Reporting: Generates detailed consumption reports to aid developers in optimizing hardware allocation and utilization.

Densify's approach enhances scalability and resource utilization across cloud environments, supporting both application development and financial management teams effectively.

Datadog: Comprehensive Cloud Monitoring

Datadog offers a suite of cloud cost management tools that monitor cloud machines, networks, serverless platforms, and applications. While tracking cloud costs is essential, Datadog's primary focus is on gathering telemetry data for performance and cost analysis. This data is integrated into a dashboard that provides insights into application costs and performance, helping organizations make informed decisions that balance performance objectives with cost considerations. Understanding this tradeoff can lead to significant cost savings.

Key features of Datadog include:

Infrastructure Monitoring: Comprehensive monitoring capabilities across multiple cloud environments.
User Monitoring: Tracks real and simulated users to enhance user experience and application performance.

Datadog's cloud cost management tools enable organizations to optimize their cloud operations by providing deep insights into both performance metrics and cost implications, supporting better decision-making and operational efficiency.

NetApp CloudCheckr: Optimizing Cloud Costs and Security

NetApp CloudCheckr, part of NetApp’s Spot constellation for cloud management, focuses on cost control and security within cloud environments. The tool specializes in managing cloud expenses by monitoring standard spending activities like consumption, forecasting, and optimizing instance sizes. It supports companies in adding layers to commodity cloud instances and offers a white-label option for transparent reporting and charting to aid customer billing comprehension.

Key features of NetApp CloudCheckr include:

Compliance Monitoring: Tracks security configurations to ensure adherence to privacy regulations.
Instance Optimization: Right-sizes reserved instances based on baseline consumption metrics.

VMware Tanzu CloudHealth: Optimizing Cloud Deployments

VMware Tanzu CloudHealth, formerly Aria Cost and Aria Automation, is developed by VMware's Broadcom subsidiary to manage deployments across major cloud platforms and hybrid environments. It includes a cost accounting module that tracks spending and allocates costs to business teams while optimizing deployments to reduce expenses. The platform's modeling capabilities allow for the creation of amortization and consumption schedules to forecast future demand accurately.

Key features of VMware Tanzu CloudHealth include:

Spending Governance: Enforces budget adherence by teams, ensuring responsible resource consumption.
Integration with Business Metrics: Links cloud costs with business metrics and key performance indicators, enabling stakeholders to understand the impact of computational costs on financial outcomes.

Microsoft Azure Cost Management + Billing

Microsoft Azure Cost Management + Billing is a suite of tools designed to monitor, allocate, and optimize the costs associated with Microsoft Cloud workloads. These tools are free for Azure usage. However, there is a 1% charge on total AWS-managed spend at general availability.

Key features of Microsoft Azure Cost Management + Billing include:

Cost Reporting and Analysis: Provides detailed reports and analysis of cloud costs to help organizations understand their spending.
Proactive Cost Monitoring: Offers budget, anomaly detection, and scheduled alerts to monitor costs proactively.
Integration with Azure Monitor: Utilizes Azure Monitor for monitoring and observability, providing insights into the operation and performance of Azure resources.

Harness: Automating Deployment and Cost Management

Harness provides a robust CI/CD pipeline for DevOps teams to automate deployment processes and monitor usage to ensure budget compliance. Its cost management features actively monitor spending against historical data, issuing alerts for anomalies. Harness includes a functionality to automatically stop unused instances, including spot machines, to optimize cost savings despite their transient nature.

Key features of Harness include:

Integration with CI/CD Pipeline: Embeds cost savings into the software creation process, enhancing efficiency from development to deployment.
Automated Compliance: Seamlessly integrates cost management with regulatory and governance requirements.

Flexera One: Comprehensive Cloud Management Suite

Flexera One is a versatile cloud management suite designed to handle various cloud management tasks, from asset tracking to governance orchestration. A key focus area of Flexera One is budget control, offering multi cloud accounting capabilities to track spending with detailed reporting segmented by team and project. The tool suggests optimizations to enhance consumption efficiency by targeting inefficient allocations and implements these optimizations automatically. Utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence, Flexera One analyzes consumption patterns across multiple clouds.

Key features of Flexera One include:

Integrated Reporting: Provides consolidated reporting across multiple clouds, aiding business groups in understanding and managing costs effectively.
Optimization Recommendations: Identifies opportunities to right-size instances and eliminate wasteful spending, optimizing cloud resource usage.

Yotascale: Empowering Engineers with Cloud Cost Optimization

Yotascale focuses on empowering engineers who write and deploy code by providing them with detailed tools to optimize hardware consumption. Engineers have access to granular data to make informed decisions about starting up instances and managing data storage efficiently. Yotascale's tools track machines and allocate costs directly to the responsible teams, enhancing transparency and accountability.

Key features of Yotascale include:

Engineer-targeted Tools: Delivers budget information directly to software development teams, enabling informed decision-making during instance startup and resource allocation.
Automated Tracking: Provides forecasts and alerts for anomalies, ensuring proactive management of cloud costs and preventing unexpected bills.

ServiceNow: Optimizing Microservices and IT Operations

Teams managing extensive collections of microservices can rely on ServiceNow to optimize and manage their IT operations. While many of ServiceNow's tools are customer-facing solutions like IT automation, there are also robust backend tools designed to enhance IT performance through intelligent management. The platform's AIops capabilities deliver artificial intelligence solutions to further streamline operations.

Key features of ServiceNow include:

Broad Selection of Tools: Tracks and optimizes IT assets effectively.
Integrated Risk Management: Combines with governance tools for comprehensive oversight and control.

Nutanix: Multi Cloud Cost Management and Optimization

Organizations with extensive multi cloud deployments can benefit from Nutanix Cost Governance (formerly Beam) for tracking costs across various installations, including private cloud machines hosted on premises. Nutanix's cloud cost management tool can be customized to generate accurate cost estimates for private installations by factoring in expenses such as heating, cooling, hardware, and data center rent. This capability aids in making informed decisions about allocating workloads to the most cost-effective deployment options. Additionally, the process can be automated to simplify management and budget planning for reserved instances.

Key features of Nutanix Cost Governance include:

Private Cloud Metering: Provides detailed insights into the costs of on-premises hardware.
Budget Alerts and Dynamic Optimization: Helps right-size consumption to minimize costs.

Which Cloud Cost Management Solution Is Best For Your Company?

Features & Benefits of IBM Turbonomic

Comprehensive Visibility:

Patented Top-Down Approach: The IBM Turbonomic platform connects critical applications to underlying resources across the entire infrastructure.
Cross-Environment Coverage: It spans applications, containers, and virtualization in both cloud and on-premises environments, covering compute, storage, and network layers.
Enhanced Resource Management: This visibility ensures precise and cost-effective resource management decisions.

Intelligent Automation:

Automated Workload Placement and Scaling: IBM Turbonomic optimizes performance and prevents congestion by dynamically adjusting VMs, containers, and storage in real-time based on demand.
Efficiency and Scalability: The software monitors metrics for cost savings, considers Reserved Instances, and provides insights for enhancing IT environment efficiency and scalability.

AI-Powered Insights:

Simplified Decision-Making: The platform offers three pre-built dashboards displaying key metrics, helping teams make informed decisions without being overwhelmed by data.
Custom Dashboards: Users can easily create custom dashboards within the interface to meet specific team needs or views.
Impact Analysis: The dashboards also show how automating decisions can positively affect the environment.