Top 5 Cloud Cost Management Tools You’ll Need in 2023

Cloud cost management (CCM) tool helps organizations to have real-time visibility into usage patterns, cloud resources, and cost allocations that allow them to optimize their cloud spend, discover inefficiencies, and understand their estimated cloud costs. 

What is Cloud Cost Management?

Cloud cost management effectively handles your cloud expenses to reduce costs and increase investment returns. The mechanism includes measuring, tracking, and regulating cloud spending to identify the most cost-effective techniques. It provides cloud cost control for storage, instances, memory, network traffic, and more. 

Traditionally, it was all about reducing costs and increasing returns. However, today, the cloud cost optimization strategy has shifted to optimizing standard cloud infrastructure per cloud needs. The usage and costs are accessed to forecasts, the requirements, and the cloud infrastructure. 

Benefits of Cloud Cost Management

Some of the common benefits of Cloud Cost Management you should know include: 

1. Cost savings: Organizations that proactively plan their cloud costing can easily prevent underutilization and overspending of resources. 
2. Predictability: An organization that precisely forecasts its cloud computing needs won’t be caught off guard by a prompt jump in expenses. It may benefit from early bird discounts and pricing for the predicted usage. 
3. Architectural change: Evaluating spending also helps organizations via optimization of the currently used cloud infrastructure by either making a shift or making the needed enhancements in the current architecture.
4. Efficient usage: The advantages of autoscaling, load balancing, volume discounts, capacity reserving, and saving programs can function as a lifesaver among cloud spend management. 
5. Cost visibility: Alongside helping with cloud cost optimization, visibility into your cloud architecture and resources helps organizations regarding security and governance. 

Top 5 Cloud Cost Management Tools

1. AWS Cost Explorer: Amazon CloudWatch is one of the cloud cost optimization tools available to Amazon Web Services (AWS) users. It offers a real-time view of AWS resource performance and utilization, aiding your company to optimize costs and enhance efficiency. 

Using CloudWatch, users can set alarms to trigger when threshold values are met. For instance, you can fix the alarm to notify you if your AWS bill exceeds a specific amount for the month. Users can also use CloudWatch to track key performance indicators (KPIs) for your companies, like web traffic or application response times. 

2. Google Cloud: Google Cloud offers robust cloud cost management tools, including Cost Explorer, budget alerts, and cost forecasting, enabling businesses to monitor, analyze, and control their cloud expenses. These tools help visualize spending, allocate costs, and provide cost-saving recommendations. 

Google Cloud offers savings plans, commitments, and a free tier to optimize costs. Custom alerts, cost attribution, and APIs enhance flexibility and accuracy in cost management. These tools empower organizations to maximize their cloud investments, prevent overages, and effectively align cloud resources with their budgetary and operational needs.

3. Microsoft Azure: Microsoft Azure offers a comprehensive set of tools and services for cloud cost management, helping organizations optimize their cloud spending and maximize the value of their Azure resources.

• Azure Cost Management and Billing: This service provides detailed cost analysis, budget tracking, and spending alerts. Users can gain insights into resource costs, view historical data, and set up budgets to control expenditures.
• Azure Cost Management APIs allow programmatic access to cost data, enabling integration with custom applications and third-party tools for more advanced cost management and reporting.
• Azure Advisor: Azure Advisor recommends optimizing resource usage and reducing costs. It guides resizing or shutting down underutilized resources and suggests ways to save money.
• Reserved Virtual Machine Instances: Azure allows customers to reserve VM instances for one or three years, providing substantial cost savings compared to pay-as-you-go pricing.

4. Densify: Densify is a cloud cost management tool that specializes in optimizing cloud resource utilization to help organizations maximize the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their cloud environments. It uses machine learning and analytics to analyze and recommend optimizing cloud workloads. Critical features of Densify include:

• Resource Optimization: Densify evaluates the utilization of virtual machines (VMs) and other cloud resources to identify opportunities for resizing or downsizing instances. This ensures that organizations are not overpaying for help they don’t need.
• Cost Optimization: The tool recommends reducing cloud costs by rightsizing instances, changing pricing plans, or utilizing reserved cases effectively.
• Forecasting: Densify offers cost forecasting and budgeting capabilities, helping organizations plan for future cloud expenditures.
• Policy-Based Optimization: Users can define policies to automate resource optimization based on their needs and business rules.

5. nOps: nOps is a cloud cost management and optimization tool designed to help organizations manage their cloud infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS). It enhances cost visibility, security, and compliance in AWS environments. Critical features of nOps include:

• Cost Optimization: nOps provides insights into AWS spending, identifies cost anomalies, and offers recommendations to optimize cloud costs. It helps organizations allocate costs accurately and reduce unnecessary expenditures.
• Security and Compliance: The tool continuously monitors AWS configurations for protection best practices and compliance with industry standards like CIS and HIPAA. It alerts users to potential vulnerabilities or non-compliance issues.
• Resource Management: nOps assists in resource management by offering visibility into the utilization of AWS resources. It provides recommendations for rightsizing instances and optimizing resource allocation.
• Change Tracking: It tracks changes made to AWS resources, allowing organizations to understand how modifications impact cost, security, and compliance.

Conclusion 

In 2023, effective cloud cost management remains critical for organizations leveraging cloud services. The top cloud cost management tools empower businesses to make data-driven decisions, set budgets, and receive recommendations to reduce costs while maintaining operational efficiency. As cloud adoption continues to grow, having a robust cloud cost management strategy supported by these tools is imperative for organizations to thrive in the cloud-driven landscape.