Page 5 of Umbrella Blog

The upcoming AWS Summit in New York on July 10, 2024, has us tingling with excitement. This event is a key date in our calendar, bringing together the brightest minds in cloud technology. This year's focus on generative AI and its impact on business has us particularly intrigued. The summit offers over 170 sessions covering a wide range of topics. Getting a firsthand look into the latest developments in cloud computing, especially those related to cost management and AI applications is always powerful. Plus the hands-on labs and workshops will give our team a chance to sharpen their skills and explore new AWS tools. Dr. Matt Wood (AWS), Will McQueen (Bayer Crop Science), and Brad Peterson (Nasdaq) wil be talking about how AWS is making AI more available to everyone. This matters for big companies and small startups alike. We want to learn how new AI tools, developer resources, and basic tech are working together. They'll show us where tech is heading and how AWS is creating safe, growing solutions. It's a good time to be building new things in tech, and we're keen to see why. But it's not all about the tech. The AWS Summit is also a fantastic networking event. We're looking forward to catching up with old friends in the industry and meeting potential new partners and customers. These connections often lead to exciting collaborations and ideas that help us improve our product offering. For Umbrella, this summit is more than just a learning opportunity. It's a chance for us to stay at the forefront of cloud cost management and AI applications. We plan to take what we learn and explore how we can apply it to make our cloud cost management tools even more effective and user-friendly. Our goal is to come away with fresh ideas on how we can better serve our customers in managing their cloud costs. If you're attending the AWS Summit, we'd love to meet up. Stop by booth #1014  to talk about how Umbrella can help you manage your cloud costs more effectively, or just chat about the exciting developments in cloud technology. See you in New York!

If you operate in FinOps, are part of an MSP, or work for an enterprise utilizing the cloud, you're likely familiar with the latest updates on CloudHealth after its acquisition by Broadcom. Since 2018, CloudHealth has been closely tied to the term "acquired," initially by VMware and now by Broadcom, creating an ongoing change cycle. Clients and prospects are understandably cautious when observing CloudHealth as the climate uncertainty and instability grow. This peak of potential disruption to cloud operations provides a unique opportunity for organizations to consider switching to a more reliable and forward-thinking Cloud Cost Optimization solution.  Here’s why now is the perfect time to make the move.   CloudHealth (Broadcom) Umbrella Partner Program Selective, High Requirements Robust, Serves Hundreds of MSPs Pricing Vague, Potential Increases Transparent, Competitive Cloud Support Delays in GCP & Azure Updates Full Visibility Across AWS, GCP, Azure Scalability for MSPs Potential Disruptions Efficient Management and Scaling Cost Management Features Basic Real-time Anomaly Detection, Automated Savings Tracker AI Integration Limited CostGPT for AI-powered Insights Customer Focus Unclear after Acquisition Proven Partner Program, Focuses on Customer Success   Understanding the Change The Broadcom Advantage Partner Program replaced VMware’s partner programs after Broadcom acquired VMware on February 5, 2024. The program will invite only select partners based on specific criteria.  What are the specific criteria? While a lot of uncertainty still remains among CloudHealth partners regarding the program’s invitees and specific requirements, we know a significant one is that partners must demonstrate a minimum of $50,000 per month or $500,000 per year in VMware revenue to qualify for an invitation. This criteria may exclude several MSPs who cater to the SMB market.  Other standards to meet: Performance Metrics: Partners are likely evaluated based on their historical performance, including sales volume, customer satisfaction scores, and overall business growth. Technical Capabilities: Broadcom may assess the technical proficiency of partners, including certifications, technical expertise, and the ability to support and implement Broadcom’s solutions effectively. Market Reach: The partners' geographical coverage and market presence may be considered, ensuring Broadcom’s solutions reach a broad and diverse customer base. Strategic Alignment: Partners that align closely with Broadcom’s strategic goals and priorities, such as focusing on key industries or technology areas, are more likely to be selected. Innovation and Value Add: Partners demonstrating innovation in their service offerings and the ability to add significant value to Broadcom’s solutions may have a competitive edge. Financial Stability: Partners' financial health and stability are critical to sustaining long-term relationships and investments in Broadcom’s technologies. Customer Base: Partners with a substantial and loyal customer base, particularly those with large enterprises or high-value clients, will likely be favored. These new standards are well-suited to Broadcom's goals but fail to address the needs of its cloud clients and customers.  As Allen Skipper, SVP at Expedient, said, “Since the acquisition of VMware by Broadcom, there's just been a great deal of confusion and concern in the market. Companies are asking all sorts of questions like, 'How much are costs increasing from VMware? ‘What's this 27 SKUs down to three options that people are talking about? Do we have options to move to other providers or to other hypervisors?" Potential Operational Shifts The acquisition by Broadcom will cause notable internal restructuring at CloudHealth, a change that typically results in service delivery and customer support disturbances. As Broadcom merges CloudHealth into its current operations, inefficiencies and delays are unavoidable. These operational adjustments may pose significant challenges for businesses dependent on smooth and continuous service delivery. How will this affect MSPs? MSPs, solution providers, resellers, and distributors must adapt to this new restructuring. This might mean reevaluating their business strategies, undergoing extra training, and adjusting to Broadcom's new benefits and support structure. Current MSP VMware partners have limited time to adapt to the new program. This can lead to potential disruptions in the service delivery and support provided to their customers. MSPs must also be prepared for delays or inefficiencies during this transitional period. Pricing and Contract Adjustments Unfortunately, Broadcom has been vague about the details of the pricing changes. Many existing VMware partners, particularly smaller providers, have been left in the dark about their future in the Broadcom program.  Exploring Cost-Effective Alternatives As the financial landscape shifts, now is the ideal time for CloudHealth customers to consider more economical solutions.  What to look for?  A transparent and flexible pricing model that can be tailored to fit your organization's unique needs ensures you only pay for what you need, helping to optimize your budget and reduce unnecessary expenditures. Umbrella offers competitive pricing to give MSPs innovative features and powerful ROI. Our latest product upgrade, CostGPT, harnesses advanced AI to offer smart cost management insights for informed financial decisions. We also provide ML technologies for predictive analytics, anomaly detection, and automated actions, empowering proactive cost management and resource optimization.  Delays in the scalability of MSP operations Due to this acquisition, several disruptions could significantly impact the scalability of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) operations. Specifically, delays in processing updates for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Azure assets have been reported. Negative effects of delayed GCP and Azure assets MSPs now struggle to keep client environments current. This lag results in inefficiencies and extended troubleshooting times. Additionally, delayed updates hinder strategic planning, complicating the rollout of new services and the effective scaling of existing ones. Moreover, these disruptions can erode client trust and satisfaction, as they expect timely updates and seamless operation. MSPs' reputations may suffer, leading to potential loss of business.  Exploring Alternative Solutions This CloudHealth Broadcom Acquisition brings hesitation for MSPs as World Wide Technology CEO Jim Kavanaugh expressed:    "We would love to build a strategic partnership with VMware. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that’s what they have planned."   Exploring multiple FinOps tools can enhance your clients' diverse insights and capabilities and give you a tailored approach to their unique needs.  How Umbrella Supports MSPs and Enterprises  We boast seven key strengths that set us apart from the start: Accurate Forecasting and Budgeting: Our data feedback helps fine-tune your model for top accuracy. The autonomous forecast is up 24/7, crunching real-time data streams to give ongoing forecasts for smarter budgeting and cost savings. Cost Visibility and Control: We offer visibility for efficiently understanding multi-cloud and Kubernetes spending, helping you manage costs across all cloud accounts. Savings Recommendations: Over 80  real-time recommendations to monitor and optimize cloud costs and resource usage across AWS, GCP, and Azure. Dive deep into your data to see how your infrastructure is and get immediate savings. Real-time Anomaly Detection and Alerts: Our advanced algorithms identify irregular patterns and potential cost anomalies in real-time, alerting you to deviations from the norm. Automatic Savings Tracker: With automated report saving and tracking capabilities, you can effortlessly track and evaluate the performance of your recommendations. Multi-Tenant, Multi-Billing for MSPs and Enterprises: Consolidate and simplify billing operations for your customers on a unified platform. CostGBT for AI-Powered Cloud Cost Insights: Enhances user experience with contextual insights, cost projections, and answers to complex cloud cost queries with a simple search.   Navigating Your Future with CloudHealth It hasn't even been a year since VMware (CloudHealth) was acquired, and the moves made so far haven't delivered the expected results for customers and partners. These actions involve streamlining product SKUs, discontinuing perpetual licenses, transitioning the top 2,000 VMware customers to direct sales, and implementing layoffs. There shouldn't be an exclusive program that only shows your value to the platform. They should work with you, not profit from you. Umbrella is proud to have a robust Partners Program. We currently serve hundreds of accounts under our partners, including MSPs with over 3000 active users monthly. We’re not just a solution; we want to be a part of your success! Let us help you migrate from CloudHealth and start benefiting from an AI-powered solution that empowers MSPs to manage and scale their existing clients efficiently.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the next significant technological frontier, poised to revolutionize the tech sector, particularly through its massive impact on cloud infrastructures.  By 2024, this transformation is expected to be as widespread as managed Kubernetes services, with an estimated 70% of organizations utilizing managed AI services in their cloud setups. This surge in adoption is fueled by AI's ability to analyze vast amounts of data and extract valuable insights, empowering businesses to optimize operations, enhance decision-making, and drive innovation. Are cloud services becoming more expensive due to AI? The impact of AI on cloud services has become highly significant and will continue to grow every year. While initially, AI might seem to increase cloud service costs due to the rise in demand, cloud providers are actively innovating. They're building optimization tools that can significantly reduce costs for businesses. These innovations will likely keep prices competitive in the long term. What are the benefits of AI in cloud infrastructure? The benefits of AI in cloud infrastructure are: Automation: AI can be used to automate cloud infrastructure. It can automate resource allocation and upscaling or downscaling cloud computing services like computing, storage, networking, and database services based on load and system requirements. Security: AI-powered systems can monitor data patterns and request behavior in real-time to detect issues preemptively. This helps prevent downtime in service or associated costs due to some anomaly or attack on the system.  Optimization: AI can help set up an efficient and optimized cloud infrastructure. These systems can monitor resource utilization and suggest alternate approaches or upscale or downscale a service according to usage patterns. Such predictive recommendations can significantly reduce cloud costs. Maintenance: AI systems can use your cloud infrastructure logs and data to predict potential issues and enable proactive maintenance. This helps schedule maintenance tasks in time and prevents service disruptions. Scalability: AI-driven systems enable cloud infrastructure to scale dynamically in response to changing workloads and traffic. Such capabilities ensure optimal performance even during peak traffic hours and enable cost savings during low-traffic hours. What are the pros of AI-driven cloud services on cloud costs? The pros of AI-driven cloud services on cloud costs are: Cloud Cost Optimization Tools: Several AI-driven tools are being used to optimize cloud spending. Such tools analyze usage patterns and recommend cost optimization measures. One of the leading tools in this space is built by Umbrella, CostGPT. CostGPT is a fully automated state-of-the-art cost optimization AI tool that helps reduce cloud costs significantly by providing personalized analysis and recommendations. This approach differentiates it from most competitors who offer generic recommendations, making it significantly more effective. Increased Efficiency: AI-driven systems can streamline cloud infrastructure and cloud management tasks. This reduces the need for human intervention and improves resource allocation and utilization, eventually leading to increased cost savings. Security Costs Reduction: Cloud infrastructures need to be secure from malicious intent. Companies spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to keep their cloud infrastructure and data safe. AI tools provide enhanced threat detection capabilities, anomaly detection, fraud analysis, etc. These features help reduce a company's overall spend in the security domain. What are the cons of AI-driven cloud services on cloud costs? The cons of AI-driven cloud services on cloud costs are: Potential Cost Increases: The growing use of AI across the industry, especially for resource-intensive tasks, leads to increased demand for compute resources, thus driving the cost upwards for VM instances, GPUs, and TPUs. Data Storage and Processing Costs: AI applications require large amounts of data and datasets to train and test the models, which leads to increased cloud storage and data processing costs. It also involves data transfer costs between cloud environments, networks, and other resources.  Research and Development Costs: If you plan on developing in-house AI models, training large AI models such as LLMs requires huge computational power, which can substantially increase your cloud costs. Deployment Costs: Deploying and running your AI models is also resource-intensive. The models often need much computational power to run and provide inference. Depending on the model's size and request frequency, this incurs additional computing, network, and storage costs. AI systems are having and will continue to have a massive impact on cloud computing. As a result, investment in this technology is becoming increasingly crucial for companies. However, it’s important to invest carefully and understand the value you’re deriving from your investment. This can be achieved by leveraging the right platforms, such as Umbrella. What is CostGPT CostGPT is an AI tool created by Umbrella that provides insights into your cloud cost structure. It is easy to use: All you need to do is type in your question, and CostGPT instantly analyzes and generates insights with clear visualizations of your cloud spending.  CostGPT is compatible with other Umbrella products. It helps you leverage the historical data accumulated with Umbrella to generate ad-hoc forecasts for your cost-related queries. This feature provides a holistic look into your cloud costs.   What are the benefits of using CostGPT? The benefits of using Umbrella’s CostGPT are: Actionable Insights: CostGPT provides personalized, actionable recommendations for your cloud infrastructure that can be used to optimize your cloud spend. Multi-Cloud Support: CostGPT, like the Umbrella platform, supports multiple cloud environments. Therefore, if you use multiple cloud providers like AWS, GCP, Azure, etc., CostGPT has you covered. It provides drilled-down and summarized insights about your system. Proactive Decision Making: CostGPT analyzes usage and data patterns to detect anomalies in the system. This enables you to take any required action proactively and prevent outages, disruptions in service, and unnecessary costs. Real-Time Visualizations: CostGPT, like the rest of the Umbrella platform, provides real-time visualizations of the system that enable you to analyze your cloud costs. These visualizations help monitor the system, understand the data/usage patterns, and plan your cloud cost spending at a higher level.   CostGPT FAQs What is a CostGPT? CostGPT is an AI tool created by Umbrella that provides insights into your cloud cost structure. What are the benefits of using CostGPT? CostGPT provides personalized, actionable recommendations and real-time visualizations that can be used to optimize your cloud cost spend. Where can I learn more about CostGPT? You can learn more about CostGPT and its capabilities by booking a demo.  This will allow you to see the tool and ask questions.  I’m an Umbrella user. How do I get started with CostGBT? As an Umbrella user, you can start using CostGPT right away. It’s a free feature available to all accounts! Here’s how to access the tool: Step 1: Go to the Navigation Panel and click on CostGPT. Step 2: Type in the cloud cost question you’d like answered in the search query. (You can also revisit questions asked previously to CostGPT.) Step 3: Press Enter to submit the question and receive CostGPT’s answer. The answer will be displayed on the screen. Step 4: Click “New Question” in the left panel to ask another question. In the same panel, you can also review your previous questions. Instantly, users are given much-needed insights into cloud costs, now with even greater speed! Conclusion Investing in AI-driven cloud services can be a strategic decision for businesses seeking to leverage the power of AI. While initial costs for specialized hardware, data storage, and managed services may be higher, the long-term benefits outweigh these expenses. AI unlocks functionalities that enhance cloud infrastructure's capabilities, leading to improved decision-making, process automation, and personalized customer experiences. The cloud's scalability allows businesses to adapt their AI investments to changing market dynamics, minimizing risk. AI-driven cloud services can drive innovation, increase efficiency, and unlock new revenue streams, making it a worthwhile investment.

MSPs can't afford to use a Cloud Management Solution (CMS) that doesn't follow their FinOps standards. Even with useful features, if a CMS hasn't seen significant upgrades since its launch, it's likely outdated and not meeting industry standards. If you can't count on a CSM for the best FinOps recommendations, can you call them reliable partners? That's just one of the major differentiators between us (Umbrella) and Yotascale. But let's really explore why Umbrella is the best choice for comprehensive cloud management solutions. Company Profiles   Background of Umbrella We’re a next-generation certified FinOps platform with the official badge to prove it. Our features reduce cloud waste and manage costs in multi-cloud and Kubernetes environments. Don't worry—we've got the numbers to back this statement up. Our solution offers 70 actionable savings recommendations, helping MSPs save an average of 40% on annual cloud spending by reducing the time to detect and resolve revenue-critical issues by up to 80%. Why Umbrella is the go-to for MSPs and FinOps Umbrella is the only certified FinOps platform tailored specifically for optimizing cloud financial management across the three leading public cloud providers: AWS, GCP, and Azure. Why else? We offer 100% visibility into KPIs and baselines, customizable cost allocation, advanced reporting tools, and savings suggestions. Basically, we eliminate the guesswork from your cloud strategy, making implementing a high-quality FinOps environment easier. explore Need more details on what we offer? We've got you! Advanced Features for MSPs Drive strategic procurement and pricing decisions Transform cloud unit economics Simplify and automate internal operations Advanced cost allocation, reporting, and billing rules Custom charge types, credit management, and SP/RI reallocation Extensive Library of Recommendations 70 types of actionable savings recommendations (We know we mentioned it, but we're proud of that number!) A library of usage and rate optimizations across AWS, GCP, and Azure Continuously optimize your cloud infrastructure Prioritize based on the impact you're seeing in cloud activity Track your savings history to make informed decisions on eliminating cloud waste Market-leading AI & Machine Learning Adaptive forecasting and anomaly detection Patented ML-based algorithms to avoid costly mistakes One-year forecast with 95% accuracy using just two months of historical data Optimize commitment purchases and negotiate long-term discounts CostGPT: Generative AI FinOps assistant for instant insights into cloud costs This is just a quick look at what we offer. Let's chat more if you want more info!   Yotascale is a cloud cost management platform that helps organizations manage, optimize, and reduce their cloud spending. It offers tools and analytics to provide insights into cloud costs and usage patterns across providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Why Yotascale is secondary for MSPs and FinOps? Yotascale offers basic CMS features, but more is needed to meet the specialized needs of MSPs and FinOps. For companies seeking high scalability, Yotascale's services may struggle to match the innovative FinOps solutions they wish to implement. Here's a quick comparison: Recommendations Savings Umbrella Yotascale AWS Recommendations ➕ 36 Recommendations ➖ Savings Plans Recommendation Export from AWS Advisor GCP Recommendations ➕ 6 Recommendations ➖ Export from GCP Recommendations Hub Azure Recommendations ➕ 26 Recommendations ➖ Export from Azure Advisor Recommendations Historical View ➕ ➖ MSPs Services Umbrella Yotascale Savings Customer Support ➕ ➖ Billing ➕ ➖ Rebilling ➕ ➖ Umbrella or Yotascale: Which gives MSPs the capabilities needed for FinOps practices?   MSPs don’t just work for themselves; they help businesses manage and optimize their cloud environments. That’s why most work in a FinOps framework to earn credibility and trust from their customers. Umbrella and Yotascale are choices to enhance your MSP offerings. Yet, for those aiming to elevate their business and distinguish themselves, Yotascale may need more tailored FinOps solutions to cater to your cloud clientele effectively. Umbrella is built with FinOps in mind and frequently innovates its features so its users can manage cloud costs as efficiently as possible. Our platform is designed to help MSPs automate rebilling processes accurately, eliminating manual tasks and third-party tools. We don't just offer standard recommendations; we provide the information to give you actual savings in the cloud. With Umbrella as a partner, your MSP can scale, thrive, and earn the trust of your cloud customers. See it in action!  

As of 2023, 94% of companies use cloud services. Migrating has many upsides. Scaling is more accessible; you can save money by leaving on-prem and have more control. There is one big con, though (navigating cloud migration difficulties aside): Managing a cloud environment is a full-time job. And that’s just one cloud environment! Suppose your company is working with a multicloud environment, optimizing usage and costs, and monitoring output/input while juggling security. In that case, you're looking at an entire cloud team. Simplify things with cloud optimization tools. What is cloud cost management? Cloud cost management is the practice of ensuring your cloud cost budget doesn’t get out of hand. It is a FinOps budget's best friend, helping you reduce expenses while increasing returns. It does this by tracking resource usage, setting alerts for overspending, and identifying opportunities to save. Cloud management platforms help companies manage and maintain private, public, multi-cloud single, hybrid, or fully cloud environments. A typical tool will provide automated dashboards to improve team efficiency and track spend changes and updates. Cloud management and optimization tools appeal to IT and FinOps teams because they help address data breaches and cyberattacks, and they appeal to finance because of how much you can save on budget. How do you manage cloud costs? Effective cloud cost management requires ensuring that all tools stay within profitable limits (not as easy as it sounds!). You also need to monitor labor costs to implement optimization suggestions and commitment choices based on market prices. Then, cloud cost management falls to the wayside because no one has time. That's where cloud optimization tools come into play. How to pick the best cloud optimization tool Consider the following when reviewing cloud optimization tools: Performance monitoring, so no resource is sapping the budget and that all tools perform optimally. Clarifying reporting to help you and your team understand where your spend goes when you work in the cloud. Bolstering security safeguarding your user data. Easy integration with third-party tools or AWS, GCP, Azure, or other cloud platforms. Automation of simple tasks to improve team efficiency. You don’t always need to have someone manually do those data pulls! Ease of use and a low learning curve so anyone on your team can learn to navigate dashboards and reports. Scalability so your cloud management platform can grow with your company. Budget-friendly pricing so you can add some dollars back into your yearly budget. While these are the main benefits we recommend, a great cloud optimization tool will include all of this, plus more. With that in mind, here are the optimization tools to make your time in the cloud more efficient across all services. Top cloud management tools #1: Umbrella With its cloud monitoring tools, Umbrella can cut your annual cloud spend in real time by up to 40%. Worldwide, Fortune 500 companies and SMBs use its proactive AI and ML-powered analytics. Umbrella’s next-gen alert system makes identifying overspending and saving opportunities easy. Umbrella's cloud cost management customers report an 80% faster problem detection time, a 30% reduction in incident costs, and a 90% decrease in alert noise.  In other words, we make your budget happy because of all the money you save on cloud spend! As your cloud monitoring tool means you can count on:  Complete autonomous management makes it easy to detect anomalies, forecast budgets, and receive optimization recommendations in one place.  Integration with a vast monitoring system that uses easy-to-make personalized dashboards so you can track unit economics and spending without breaking a sweat.  FinOps' expertise eliminates lengthy on-boarding time, so you can start saving ASAP.  Maximizing your multicloud experience by empowering your team to access and analyze 100% of your data, so the big and little picture always informs your decisions.  Budget-friendly prices and excellent customer service make it easy for you to grow.  Identifying and resolving problems before customers even know they exist. Total control of your multicloud with a single turnkey solution tool.  With Umbrella, you can get personalized FinOps insights to optimize your multicloud, SaaS, and K8s cost vulnerabilities. Take advantage of cost-saving auctions, improve efficiency, and forecast your budget.  Ready to save up to 40% on cloud costs? Request a demo to get started today. #2: Apache Cloudstack Apache Cloudstack is a versatile and easily scalable IaaS (infrastructure as a service) source platform. This cloud optimization tool is known for its robust resource provisioning features, cloud configuration automation, VM management capabilities, and easy-to-use API. Its most enormous appeal is how easy it is to build, deploy, and manage cloud service infrastructure. Cloudstack’s free, open-source version is highly appealing for those looking to get started with cloud optimization tools. Its ability to automate cloud configuration, provide on-demand EC2 setup services, and provide end-user resource provisioning makes it an appealing option. But suppose you’re an enterprise looking for a cloud management tool that will really help you save on budget. In that case, you’re probably better off with Umbrella. (Especially if you’re a FinOps organization!) #3: Apptio Cloudability A subset of IBM, Apptio Cloudability is one of the best tools to empower your IT, FinOps, and DevOps teams. Its ability to visualize and simplify visibility, optimization, and cloud management is top-notch. Its tools are specially made with FinOps in mind, focusing on cloud spending to help with cost visualization and budgeting. A big con for Apptio Cloudability is its weaker anomaly detection tools. Its user support and linking cost charges are also weaker than other cloud optimization tools. #4: AWS Cloudwatch CloudWatch is an AWS monitoring service that can integrate with over 70 popular AWS services. This cloud optimization tool lets you get in-depth insights into operation health, resource utilization, and performance. Expect customized dashboards, notifications, alarms, debugging resources, and in-depth monitoring and managing features. That's not to say there are no drawbacks with CloudWatch. Configuration can be complex, and new users' learning curve is steep. Though it can monitor on-premises and other cloud services, CloudWatch partners better with AWS. #5: Azure Management Tools Azure Management tools is the second most popular cloud service provider (just behind Amazon) for good reason. Expect a complete cloud management suite with tools to help you monitor and manage your cloud infrastructure and applications. You can use this platform on-premises in Azure cloud or a hybrid environment. Features include infrastructure monitoring, resource provisioning, threat detection, task automation, and app updates. Azure Management tools’ greatest appeal is their ability to unify—get all the necessary tools in one place! Its biggest unappealing feature is its learning curve, which can be daunting, especially for those new to cloud management. And good news! If you’re looking to beef up your Azure FinOps toolset, Umbrella provides advanced anomaly detection so you can easily optimize your Azure cloud finances. #6: CloudBolt CloudBolt unites DevOps, IT, FinOps, and SecOps teams with a distinctive framework. It is collaboratively addressing cloud optimization challenges by sharing functionalities. These automated tools aid in governing your cloud platform collectively. Renowned for its user-friendly interface, this platform simplifies tasks ranging from plugin development to server deployment to task decommissioning. Though CloudBolt is the ideal tool for streamlining processes, it takes work to integrate with other platforms. #7: CloudCheckr CloudCheckr is a cloud optimization and management tool that provides end-to-end cloud coverage and helps lower costs while improving security, compliance, and cloud resource usages. With this cloud management platform, you can review individual service costs across the entire AWS environment and use that data to forecast future charges. If you use AWS Spot, CloudCheckr offers Spot-focused products like Spot Ocean (Containers), Spot Echo (Cloud Cost Optimization), Spot Elasticgroup (Infrastructure), and Spot Portfolio (CloudOps). Cloudcheckr's con is data inaccuracies, as its reports are said to sometimes need to be corrected. It’s also not the fastest tool and has a higher learning curve than other cloud management tools. #8: CoreStack CoreStack is an AI-powered next-generation multi-cloud SaaS platform that helps businesses manage the cloud at scale. This cloud management and optimization tool is known for its ease of use, user-friendly dashboards, and cybersecurity detection. Features include cloud-native technology, cost anomaly detection, and cloud cost and compliance recommendations. CoreStack is not the best integration solution. Reviews speak to CoreStack’s limited ability to interface with other APIs and tools. #9: Densify Densify, or Intel Cost Optimizer, will automatically optimize your Kubernetes resources and configure cloud instances. This cloud optimization tool uses Machine Learning to analyze workloads and cloud providers, constantly working to ensure everything is cost-optimized. Its platform can run on multiple cloud services or a multicloud or hybrid environment. Expect alerts for any over-allocation of resources or inefficient utilization of tools. Common Densify cons include performance issues and low utilization for overly large or wasteful instances. #10: IBM Cloud Orchestrator IBM Cloud Orchestrator can be your go-to cloud infrastructure platform. This tool supports quick, secure monitoring, cloud environment backups, and optimization with end-to-end service deployment across platform layers. Key features include cloud usage statistics, extensive dashboards, and configuration automation. IBM Cloud Orchestrator is known for providing a flexible and consistent cloud integration platform and tools to help you manage your IT stack. This tool’s main drawback is IBM keeps a copy of everything stored in the cloud, meaning if you delete something on your end, IBM will still keep a copy. #11: Morpheus Data Morpheus Data is an agnostic cloud optimization platform tool, meaning it helps unify your toolset and standardize your processes across a multi-cloud environment. A flexible and scalable tool, Morpheus Data can integrate with public cloud tools like Azure, GCP, and AWS, with on-prem environments like VM, and even tools like Terraform and ServiceNow. Built with self-servicing VMs, container-based, and other bare metal application services, this cloud management tool can significantly boost DevOps teams. Some key features include one-click provisioning, FinOps-specific analytics and reporting tools, and automatic logging. Morpheus Data has drawbacks like a clunkier user interface and a steep learning curve, so beginners, beware! #12: OpenStack OpenStack is an open-source cloud optimization platform for IaaS (infrastructure as a service). Using APIs or dashboards it helps you govern your networking, storage, and computing resources. Features include fault and service management, networking-as-a-service, object and block storage, VM management, and more. Since OpenStack is an open-source platform, it's free! This has the obvious pro of saving budget, though the main drawback is a lack of support since you're not paying for a product. It also means your team has to be much more hands-on, with the customer support expected with a paid feature absent. #13: Spot by NetApp Spot by NetApp is a cloud management and optimization tool for engineering and FinOps teams. Its standout feature is its automation abilities. You can easily automate cost control applications and optimization tools, like container installations. Optimization recommendations are easy to implement. Spot makes identifying cost-saving opportunities to help scale workloads and automate cloud cost control easy. Spot's main drawbacks are a lack of resource scheduling guidelines and cost vagueness. Though Spot provides cloud cost granularity for the account and sub-account levels, there aren't any unified views of multi-cloud costs. #14: Terraform Terraform is the ideal cloud optimization and management tool for automation. Known for its ability to automate updates, backups, creation, and more, it's a great time-saving cloud management tool platform. Terraform is an open-source infrastructure as a code (IaaC) tool that makes it easy to manage and establish clusters across cloud providers, making it a popular DevOps pick. Key features include Kubernetes and remote state management, virtual images, network infrastructure, and the ability to codify and provision multi-cloud architecture. You can start using Terraform for free, though you can only onboard a small team and access a limited set of tools. Different versions of Terraform, like Terraform Enterprise and Terraform Cloud Business, enable you to scale by letting you onboard larger teams and access more complex environments. Terraform has a steeper-than-average learning curve and requires regular maintenance. #15: Zesty Zesty uses an AI model to provide automated cloud cost optimization solutions. It provides precise real-time cloud resource forecasts for CPU cores, storage, and more. It uses these predictions to resize storage volumes or procure or offload public cloud instances. Zesty's cloud optimization tool's primary weakness is that it only covers EC2 instances. Reduce cloud platform budgets Umbrella’s with cloud optimization tools Determine how much ROI you’re getting from the cloud with an easy-to-use report and data down to the hour – and retention periods up to 18 to 24 months. Umbrella’s cloud cost management tools mean your FinOps company can get all the info you need in one place, with one tool. Cloud budget optimization has never been easier. Umbrella works closely with your FinOps team to identify and optimize cloud irregularities. Our tools can integrate seamlessly with your current tech stack, making saving up to 40% on cloud spend easy. Need proof of concept? Talk to us for more insight into cloud usage, costs, and how much you can save with Umbrella’s tools.

It’s 2024, and businesses are projected to spend over $1 trillion on the cloud – and yet, where the costs go is still a mystery. Sure, people say that a cloud or hybrid environment is more budget-friendly than on-prem, but what factors increase or, more importantly, decrease your monthly bill? We’ll help demystify things with Microsoft Azure. Read on to learn how one of the largest cloud providers decides what to bill you each month. In this article: What is Microsoft Azure? Azure monthly price Azure pricing models Azure saving tricks & tips Azure cost management How to optimize Azure costs like a pro What is Microsoft Azure? Let’s start with the basics: Microsoft Azure is Microsoft’s cloud offering. First appearing on the market in 2010, Azure is one of the big names in the cloud world, punching in at the same weight class as GCP and AWS. Azure’s distinguishing features are its hybrid options, and, of course, easy integration with other Microsoft systems. Azure monthly price Microsoft Azure offers diverse storage, networking, analytics, computing, and more. Below is a table to break down the most common services, their starting prices, and an average working place for a typical workload: Service Priced offering Starting price Example usage Example monthly price Block Blob storage (Hot tier) GB per month $0.02 Storing 500GB in Blob Storage for 1 month 500GB * $0.023 = $11.5 / month Functions Million executions $0.20 Serverless function with 7 million executions each day for 1 month 30 days * 7 * $0.2 = $42 / month Linux virtual machines (VMs) VM hourly usage $0.00 20 VMs used for 1 month 10 VMs * 30 days * 24 hours/day * $0.004 = $57.6 / month AKS (Standard tier) Clusters per hour $0.10 8 million clusters per day for 1 month 30 days * 24 hours/day * 8 * $0.10 = $576 / month Total monthly cost for 20 VMs, a serverless function of 7 million executions per day, and 800GB storage $11.5 + $42 + $57.6 + $576 = $687.1 / month Don’t worry if you find this a bit overwhelming! We’ll go into more detail below. Azure generally offers “pay as you go” prices, though you can get discounts when you commit to one or three years of service. Azure also has a free tier, though services are much more limited, for the first 12 months of some services and ad infinitum for others. What factors inform Azure pricing? Three major factors impact your Azure pricing: Compute Storage Networking More peripherally, other minor factors that impact your pricing include: AI + Machine learning Analytics Blockchain Containers DevOps Developer tools Databases Integration Internet of all things Migration Mixed reality Mobile Web One very important additional feature is Azure’s Security Center. In this age of cyber-attacks, when the cost of cybercrime is expected to exceed $10.5 trillion in 2025, investing some in extra security is always helpful. Azure’s standard tier of Security Center entails Microsoft’s automatic protection of your resources—unless you decide to opt out. Azure pricing models Azure has several different pricing tiers. Don't worry about the cost when you're starting out. Azure offers a free tier for the first 12 months, although the tools you can access are limited. This gives you a risk-free opportunity to explore Azure and see if it's the right fit for your needs. Azure offers a range of pricing models, including pay-as-you-go, spot pricing, and reserved instances. These options give you the flexibility to expand your tools and cloud storage as needed, while still allowing you to commit to a partial price. Azure also breaks down pricing depending on the service you need, with specific pricing models for VM (virtual machine), functions, networking, and storage. Azure free tier Azure has two free tiers: a 12-month and a 30-day free tier. Some services are free indefinitely. The free services you can use indefinitely with Azure are: Development services Development services include Azure app service, Azure DevOps, and DevTest labs. Messaging, routing, and automation Services include event grid, Azure automation, and load balancer. Data management and search Free data management and search services include data factory catalog and cognitive search. Networking Networking services include inbound data transfer (which is unlimited), outbound data transfer (which is limited to up to 15GB), virtual networks (VNets), and data transfer between VNets. Serverless and containers Serverless and container services include service fabric, Azure container instances, Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS), and Azure functions (accessible up to one million requests). Misc services Additional services include Azure advisor and security center, and active director B2C. 12 month free tier The first free offering lets you use a more limited set of services for free for 12 months. Make sure you stay within the service limit for each of these services, though; otherwise, you’ll be charged fees! For example, you can only use the Windows VM for 750 hours. Service limits are the maximum number of resources or operations you can use in a subscription. They can be hard limits, which means you can't exceed them, or soft limits, which means you can request a limit increase. The services you can use for free for the whole 12 months include: Compute services This service includes Windows VMs and Linux VMs. Database services This includes (but is not limited to) the Azure SQL database (via the Microsoft SQL Server) and the Cosmos DB (which is NoSQL). Storage services Storage services include Azure-managed discs, blog storage, and Azure files. AI & analytics service AI and analytics services include computer vision, translation, personalized services, language understanding in the AI models, and text analytics. 30 day free tier The second free offering allows you to try any services not offered under the free services. If you exceed your service limits for the first free tier, Azure will provide a $200 credit to deduct from your first monthly bill. Be careful when using these free services. You will incur charges if you use any offerings outside of this list. For example, if you're using Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) but want to deploy containers, you will be billed for the VMs and container instances deployed. Pay as you go Azure's pay-as-you-go model enables users to pay according to product usage. This means you're billed for the services you use, down to the second. So, there's no need to worry about a long-term commitment or paying for services you don't use. This might appeal if you still need to commit to a product. It also allows you to up or downscale as required, meaning you can increase or decrease your usage of Azure services based on your needs. This makes it the ideal option for handling unpredictable workloads or when you're not sure how much capacity you'll need. Let’s break down how much each service costs in a pay-as-you-go model: VM pricing There are six Azure virtual machines for you to choose from. Each is divided in terms of use case: General purpose VMs General purpose VM pricing starts at $0.084/hour or $6.1320/month. It’s best for low to moderate baseline CPU usage. If you’re working with lower-traffic web servers, smaller databases, or providing microservices, the lowest-tier Bps v2 series would work well for you. Prices increase per hour and month, depending on your required storage and processing power. For example, the D2ds–D64ds v4 VM’s lowest pricing tier starts at $0.1130/hour or $82.4900/month. Compute optimized Compute-optimized F-series, which features 2-GiB and 16GiB of local SSD temporary storage per CPU core, is the lowest-priced compute-optimized service. Prices start at $0.0497/hour or $36.2810/month. The choice is yours if you manage batch processing, handle web servers, or need support for analytics or gaming VMs. Memory optimized Memory-optimized service pricing starts at $0.1010/hour or $73.7300/month for the E2ps – E32ps v5 (without local temporary storage) offering. This VM service is based on Arm architecture and is known for delivering outstanding performance for high-memory workloads. Disk storage bills separately. Storage optimized Storage-optimized pricing starts at $0.624/hour or $455.5200/month for both the Lsv2-series and the L8as—l80as v3 generation. This offering offers lots of storage and I/O, making it the best pick for big data analytics, data warehouses, or even transactional SQL/NoSQL databases. Graphical processing units (GPU) Graphical processing units (GPU) pricing starts at $0.5260/hour or $383.9800/month for the NCasT4_v3-series. This service provides GPU resources as part of the VM, making it a good choice for AI and machine learning. HPU (high performing computing) High-performance computing (HPC) pricing starts at $0.9040/hour or $659.9200/month for the H-series, designed to handle high-performance computing workloads efficiently. This service includes high-powered distributed CPU resources, making it an excellent pick for big HPC workloads. It also works well for networking like RDMA, which supports high-throughput. The above prices can be subject to change. They're calculated using CentOS/Ubuntu Linux OS and based on East US prices, the 3-year reserved instances, and the saving plan pricing model. Storage pricing There are several different Azure storage options to choose from. Here's a summary of pricing and pros vs cons for a few of the most common: Blob data storage Best used for streaming and storing videos, pictures, documents, or other unstructured data, block blob storage fluctuates in price depending on the amount of data you're looking to store, the operations you're looking to use, and whether you're using any data redundancies options. Both tiers and terabyte usage determine pricing for blob data storage: TB Usage Archive Cold Cool Hot Premium First 50 terabyte (TB) / month $0.00099 per GB $0.0036 per GB $0.015 per GB $0.021 per GB $0.15 per GB Next 450 TB / month $0.00099 per GB $0.0036 per GB $0.015 per GB $0.02 per GB $0.15 per GB Over 500 TB / month $0.00099 per GB $0.0036 per GB $0.015 per GB $0.0191 per GB $0.15 per GB General v1 storage Pricing for general v1 storage works differently. To access tiered storage, you’ll need to upgrade to a general-purpose v2 account, but for now, here’s what you’ll be working with for data storage: Storage Capacity LRS ZRS GRS RA-GRS First 1 terabyte / month $0.024 per GB $0.03 per GB $0.048 per GB $0.061 per GB Next 49 TB (1 to 50 TB) / month $0.0236 per GB $0.0295 per GB $0.0472 per GB $0.0599 per GB Next 450 TB (50 to 500) / month $0.0232 per GB $0.029 per GB $0.0464 per GB $0.0589 per GB Next 500 TB (500 to 1,000) / month $0.0228 per GB $0.0285 per GB $0.0456 per GB $0.0579 per GB Next 4,000 TB (1,000 to 5,000 TB) / month $0.0224 per GB $0.028 per GB $0.0448 per GB $0.0569 per GB   Expect upcharges for large data transfers and snapshots. These prices are specifically for the East US region and can change at any time. Azure SQL database pricing If you need an intelligent, scalable, cloud-based database, Azure SQL database is a solid choice. AI-powered features guarantee performance and durability, and a serverless compute option eliminates scaling concerns. Let’s break it down: Serverless The serverless compute option simplifies performance while optimizing spending. It's best if you're handling a lot of unpredictable usage. The primary replica pricing tier starts at $0.378/vCore-hour and $0.25 per GB per month for storage. Prices vary depending on whether you are using the hyperscale service tier or the general purpose service tier. The above prices are for hyperscale East US. Provisioned Provisioned computing offers a fixed number of resources for a fixed hourly price. Prices vary depending on your service tier and hardware type, starting at $0.366/hour or $266.684/month for the standard-series (Gen 5) vCORE 2 10.2 GB memory option. If you commit to a yearly reserved capacity offering, you can save 35% on pricing; if you commit to a 3-year reserved capacity offering, you can save 55%. [CTA id="82139892-d185-43ce-88b9-adc780676f66"][/CTA] Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) pricing Simplify Kubernetes deployment and management with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). There are three tiers: free (yay!), standard, and premium tier. Free tier Pricing for AKS starts with a free tier. You'll still have to pay for the associated storage, networking, or VM costs, though. The free tier covers a 1,000 AKS cluster node limit. You'll need to pay for nodes if you use them. Standard tier The standard tier charges $0.10 per cluster per hour. This is a good choice for scale or production workloads. You only pay for the nodes that you use, receive one uptime SLA hour, a 5,000 AKS cluster node limit, and API server autoscaling. Premium tier The premium tier is a good choice for mission-critical workloads that require two years of support. Costs start at $0.60 per cluster per hour. If needed, you'll receive one premium support hour, Microsoft maintenance support, and a 5,000 AKS cluster node limit. These above prices are based on the East US location region. Azure functions pricing With Azure Functions, you can get a serverless development experience to support data bindings and event triggers. Like other services, function services come with tier-based pricing. Consumption tier The consumption tier is billed based on per-second resource consumption. Your first 1 million requests and 400,000 GBs of consumption are free. After that, you'll need to pay $0.20 per million executions. Premium tier With this tier, you'll also get enhanced performance and VNET access in addition to the tools you get from the consumption tier. This tier bills based on several core seconds and memory allocation. The pay-as-you-go tier starts at $0.173 vCPU per hour for vCPU duration and $0.0123 GB per hour for memory duration. Spot pricing With spot pricing, you can buy unused computing power, sometimes at a 90% discount (compared to pay-as-you-go prices). But, this does come with the uncertainty of spot instances often being interrupted on short notice. You should only consider this option if your project can tolerate interruptions. Reserved instances Reserved Virtual Machine Instances (RVMI) are region-specific pre-purchased virtual machines lasting one to three years. For the longer commitment, you will receive up to 72% discounts compared to pay-as-you-go Azure pricing. You can replace or cancel reserved instances before the end of the term, though the latter incurs a cancellation fee. If your organization knows what Azure services it requires and in what amounts—and has a settled budget—this option is likely the best for you. *There are many Azure services that we have yet to cover here since we've only discussed the most common. If you want to see more prices or look for different regions of the world, Azure keeps their prices up to date here. Related content: Read our guide to Azure Pricing Backup. Azure saving tricks & tips There are more ways to save on Azure pricing beyond spot purchases or reserved instances. Azure hybrid benefit If your organization owns its own Microsoft license for your on-prem data center, the Azure hybrid benefit is for you. It lets you BYOL (bring your license), meaning you can get your Windows Server or SQL Server licenses to the cloud. So, how does this get you discounts? If you already have a Windows or SQL Server and want to run an Azure VM, your server will track your Microsoft software licensing cost and provide a discount for the VM per hour. This benefit applies to anyone using SQL Server VMs, Windows Server VMs, and Azure SQL Database service. Depending on your version of Microsoft SQL Server or Windows Service, you can get up to 3 years of free security updates (there's no need to extend your license, either!). Azure price matching Azure has pledged to price match equivalent AWS services (EC2 to EC2 services, for example, and Azure Functions to Amazon Lambda), and in keeping with that promise, Azure updated prices every 3 months to stay in line with AWS pricing changes. Azure dev/test rates You’re still eligible for discounts if you don't fit the above categories! If you're using Azure services for development and testing, you can get (a few more honestly) discounts: You can save up to 50% on Logic Apps or 55% on Azure SQL database. You can also get the Microsoft license for free by running Windows VMs for the exact cost of running Linux VMs. Azure cost management Good news – Azure provides cost management tools to help you plan your budget and optimize your user experience. Azure budget This cost management tool ensures that you never exceed budget with any Azure tool. You can get alerts when a feature approaches a set threshold. Azure price calculator Once you know what tools you need, the Azure price calculator is a great resource to determine how much you'll pay. Azure advisor This is an excellent tool for optimization. Azure Advisor provides insights into how you can improve security, performance, cost, and availability. Azure cost analysis This cost monitoring tool breaks down the cost of your various Azure tools. It can help get some granularity for where exactly your money is going. Azure exports This tool lets you export any reports (custom or pre-built) into a CSV file for easy presentation. How to optimize Azure costs like a pro Azure's cost management tools have one (big) drawback: They're provided by the same company as the tool, and the best interest isn't necessarily cost savings but user experience. If you really want tools that can help you break down the cost of working with Azure, providing easy-to-understand dashboards and crystal-precise budget projections, you'll want to use a cloud cost optimization tool. With Umbrella’s cost management tool, you can get data down to the hour with retention periods of up to 18 to 24 months. That means all your multicloud and K8 data will be in one place. Other Umbrella features include: Real-time Anomaly Detection: Quickly identifies unusual spikes in cloud costs for proactive management. AI-Powered Insights: Provides actionable insights for efficient resource utilization and cost reduction. Multi-Cloud Support: Offers comprehensive visibility and control across different cloud platforms. Customizable Dashboards and Alerts: Enhances understanding and responsiveness with tailored alerting systems. Advanced Forecasting: Utilizes predictive analysis for accurate future cloud spending and budgeting. Umbrella demystifies cloud costs for FinOps organizations. With its cloud cost management solution, you can save up to 40% on annual cloud spending. Need proof of concept? Talk to us for more insight into cloud usage, costs, and how much you can save with Umbrella’s tools.   See Additional Guides on Key DevOps Topics Together with our content partners, we have authored in-depth guides on several other topics that can also be useful as you explore the world of DevOps. Cloud Cost Optimization Authored by Umbrella Top 13 Cloud Cost Optimization Best: Practices for 2024 What Is Cloud Computing TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)? The 4 Factors Influencing Cloud Spend & 6 Ways to Optimize It  Continuous Delivery Authored by Codefresh What Is Continuous Delivery and How Does It Work? Continuous Delivery vs. Continuous Deployment  Continuous Delivery vs. Continuous Integration  Configuration Management Authored by Configu Configuration-as-Code: Principles and Best Practices Configuration Management: What DevOps Teams Need to Know Apple Pkl: Code Example, Concepts & How to Get Started 

Load balancer is a system that distributes network traffic across a group of servers. AWS’s load balancing service is called ELB (Elastic Load Balancing). It automatically distributes incoming traffic across multiple targets like EC2 instances, containers, and IP addresses. It essentially acts as a traffic cop for your application, ensuring high availability and scalability. What are the features of load balancers?   The main features of load balancers are: Traffic Distribution: Load balancers distribute incoming traffic evenly across healthy targets among your service deployments, thus preventing any single target from getting overloaded. Security: Load balancers secure services and applications with certificate authentication and certificate management. They can also terminate SSL/TLS and thus reduce the service's workload.  Health Monitoring: Load balancers provide real-time health monitoring functionality. They continuously monitor the health of your targets and only route traffic to healthy targets. When a target instance becomes unhealthy, ELB automatically removes it from the rotation until it recovers. Scalability: ELB provides auto-scaling capabilities. It can increase or decrease the instances based on the received traffic. It can also optimize resource usage and allocation and reduce unnecessary wastage or disruption in service. Session Management: Load balancers ensure that subsequent requests from a particular client go to the same server, which is useful for session persistence.  Logging and Monitoring: Load balancers provide logging capabilities that track access logs, which capture detailed information about each request, including client IP address, turnaround time of request, etc. Load balancers integrate with native AWS monitoring services like Cloud Watch for real-time monitoring and alerting.   What are the different types of Elastic Load Balancers (ELBs)?   AWS offers four types of ELBs: Application Load Balancer (ALB): The Application Load Balancer (ALB) routes HTTP/HTTPS traffic and performs advanced traffic management tasks. It operates on the application layer of the OSI model and can handle features like content-based routing, which allows you to direct requests to specific targets based on their content. The context includes URL paths for path-based routing and hostnames for host-based routing. Network Load Balancer (NLB): The Network Load Balancer (NLB) is designed for high performance and low latency. It operates on the transport layer of the OSI model and is suited for handling TCP and UDP-based traffic. It provides ultra-low latency and high throughput, making it efficient for distributing traffic across healthy instances and suitable for applications that require high-performance load balancing. Gateway Load Balancer (GLB): The Gateway Load Balancer (GLB) is a type of load balancer used for deploying third-party virtual appliances like firewalls or intrusion detection systems. It provides seamless integration capabilities for such appliances, thus securing your network from malicious intent. Classic Load Balancer (CLB): AWS provides a legacy load balancer called CLB. While still operational, it is an older-generation load balancer designed for the EC2-Classic network (a legacy network option). It provides basic load-balancing capabilities and operates on both application and transport layers. Note: Using the newer ALB or NLB for most modern applications is recommended. Costs Associated with Load Balancers   Load balancers incur the following types of costs: Usage Costs(Hourly Charge) You are charged per hour for using an Application Load Balancer and a Network Load Balancer. The hourly costs associated with Network Load balancers are generally less than those of Application Load Balancers.  LCU — Lambda Consumption Unit Charges Application Load Balancers also incur costs associated with resource consumption for processing requests. These costs are measured in Lambda Consumption Unit hours. It basically refers to the processing power used to cater to the incoming request load; therefore, it's variable and depends on various factors such as    the number of requests, the size and complexity of the payload, the number of target servers involved, etc. Mutual TLS If Mutual TLS authentication is being used along with an Application Load Balancer, it incurs additional costs. Mutual TLS simplifies authentication management and reduces the load on your applications by enabling the load balancer to negotiate mutual authentication between the client and the server while negotiating TLS. Data Transfer Charges Even though load balancers don’t incur data transfer charges within the same availability zone or VPC, various associated costs can occur if your load balancer is handling servers inside a different VPC. Potentially similar costs can occur between your client application and load balancers spread across multiple availability zones or virtual private clouds.   How to Optimize ELB Costs with Umbrella   Umbrella is an AI-powered platform that helps you reduce and manage your cloud costs. Some of the benefits of using AWS ELB with Umbrella are: Improved Cost Management: Umbrella’s platform helps identify ELB usage patterns, which eventually helps identify opportunities to optimize load balancer configurations. Anomaly Detection: Umbrella’s AI platform can help proactively detect anomalies in traffic patterns. This helps identify sudden spikes in resource utilization that result in unexpected cost increases. Umbrella’s platform enables you to react quickly when such incidents occur and avoid disruption in service and unwanted costs. Notifications and Alerting: Umbrella provides capabilities for automated alerts and notifications for certain system incidents. This enables you to address issues promptly and minimize downtime.  Application Monitoring: Umbrella’s platform provides much more advanced monitoring capabilities than native ELB monitoring tools. This provides deeper insights into application performance and identifies potential bottlenecks.   Some FAQs? Some common FAQs about load balancing: What is load balancing? Load balancing is distributing traffic and computational workloads among multiple servers in a system.   What are the different types of load balancers in AWS? AWS offers four types: Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer, Gateway Load Balancer, and Classic Load Balancer. Where is load balancing generally used? Load balancers are generally used in web applications. They distribute traffic among multiple servers of a front-end or back-end application, which can be some backend API or a server-side rendering of a front-end application. It is essential to manage a large incoming load and uniformly distribute it among various servers so that we never face crashes or downtime in service.  

We're back with this year's cloud cost report. This time around, we're mixing things up a bit. Don't worry. You'll still get an in-depth look at cloud cost in the FinOps industry, but you'll get more insights with our data-driven results from leading reports and Umbrella's customers. If you're already reaching out to grab that report, you can find it here. If you're interested in a sneak peek, here's a quick preview of what our 2024 report has in store. Current Trends in Cloud Costs What should FinOps expect this year? Top industry leaders share their insights on the 2024 cloud cost landscape. FinOps Foundation 2024 State of FinOps Report For the first time, reducing waste and managing commitments have emerged as the primary priorities for FinOps practitioners across all spending tiers. Nearly half of the practitioners highlighted the need for organizational alignment and executive buy-in to tackle their challenges effectively. Prioritizing automation has become one of the top three focus areas across all spending tiers. Organizational focus is directed towards improving budget granularity, communication, forecast accuracy, and budget adherence, with almost 57% of respondents seeking enhancement. The impact of AI/ML costs on FinOps practices is becoming evident, with 31% of all respondents and 45% of large spenders ($100M+ annual cloud spend) acknowledging its influence. Challenges include the rapid escalation of AI costs, allocation of shared AI expenses, and correlating AI costs with business outcomes. Flexera  2024 State of the Cloud Report Optimizing current cloud usage and transitioning more workloads to the cloud are high priorities for organizations across all usage levels. Managing cloud expenses has emerged as a significant challenge, surpassing security concerns. While the self-reported wasted cloud spending on IaaS and PaaS has decreased to 27% from a peak of 35% in 2022, only half of organizations have a dedicated FinOps team for cloud cost optimization. Despite economic uncertainties, cloud cost optimization precedes most organizations' sustainability. A large percentage of respondents, 85%, utilize GenAI cloud services to varying extents, with 25% extensively, 38% in experimental stages, and 22% using them sparingly.  Intel Granulate State of Cloud Optimization 2024 report In 2024, the primary objective is prioritizing cloud spend management, followed by security and compliance. Many teams need to regularly review their cloud expenditures, with nearly half of respondents reporting quarterly or annual reviews, at 30.5% and 16.7%, respectively. Installing microservices leads to increased costs, with containers and Kubernetes identified as the most expensive and challenging-to-optimize workloads. So, what patterns are we seeing from these reports? In 2024, the FinOps team will prioritize cloud spend management, security, and compliance. Many teams need to regularly review their cloud expenditures, and adopting microservices leads to increased costs, with containers and Kubernetes identified as the most expensive and challenging-to-optimize workloads. Identifying current trends can be an eye-opener, showing what your FinOps colleagues prioritize in the cloud. Now that you know what to prepare for, how can you optimize for success? We'll show you what our customers are doing!   How Umbrella Customers Maximize Their Cloud Investments Giving tips on managing cloud costs is one thing, but when you’ve got real data to back it up, that's what counts! Here’s how our customers are cutting down their cloud expenses. Controlling Cloud Spend Umbrella customers are witnessing a trend to brag about: their cloud footprint is expanding, yet their monthly expenditures are consistently declining! How? This happens because our clients actively use advanced platforms to give clear advice on using the cloud better and save money simultaneously. These tools don't just aim to reduce expenses; they empower businesses to extract maximum value from the cloud. They facilitate timely, informed decisions and instill a culture of financial accountability. Impacts As a result, even as these customers scale up their operations and migrate additional workloads to the cloud, they're achieving a notable reduction in their cloud costs, seeing a consistent downward trend month over month and year over year. Cloud usage & cost optimization As mentioned before, a key goal for FinOps in 2024 is to optimize cloud usage and costs. This means smartly designing infrastructure to maximize efficiency. Umbrella revealings When analyzing cloud usage and cost data, Umbrella's AI engine generates recommendations for workload and rate optimization. In 2022, workload and rate optimizations were equally prevalent in recommendations, but by 2023, workload optimizations took the lead, constituting over 90% of recommendations. Impacts Umbrella's AI engine significantly shifts towards workload optimizations; companies implementing FinOps must focus more on designing efficient infrastructures. This indicates a move towards smarter cloud management strategies, ensuring that resources are used more effectively, ultimately leading to cost savings and enhanced operational efficiency. Realized savings opportunities Umbrella users looked for ways to cut costs without losing the benefits they get from their cloud investments. The Numbers 2022 witnessed the completion of about 60% of the recommendations, which soared to nearly 90% in 2023, marking a significant 55% increase! Impacts There's a clear shift happening where the main focus is now on cutting down waste and managing commitments better. These have become the top priorities for FinOps practitioners at every spending level. Most impactful optimizations Which of our customers followed our advice for efficient cloud operations? In 2023, FinOps practitioners put over 90% of Umbrella's optimization tips into practice. 5 most implemented optimizations Ebs-unattached, ec2-stopped-instance, ip-unattached, ebs-outdated-snapshot, and cloudtrail-duplicate-trails were the top optimizations by FinOps practitioners, making up nearly half of all completed optimizations. Ebs-unattached was the most impactful, contributing to over half of the savings, a significant increase from 33.75% last year. The other top optimizations accounted for less than 13% of total savings. Impact These results show that zeroing in on certain tweaks, like dealing with unattached EBS volumes and shutting down EC2 instances, can really cut down organizational costs. It’s pretty eye-opening that the unattached EBS volumes accounted for more than half of the savings, showing how much money these optimizations can save. This also points to a growing trend of getting savvy with FinOps practices, especially since we’re seeing more savings from these optimizations than last year. Companies focusing on these areas can manage their cloud resources and costs way more effectively. Looking Ahead: Predictions for Cloud Costs So, what's next for cloud tech and FinOps? Here's a quick look at our thoughts and what our customers are saying about the latest in managing cloud costs. Umbrella's perspective After reviewing our customer's data and the opinions of top experts, we think the future of managing cloud costs will definitely involve AI innovations and a few challenges.  Our viewpoint We expect business leaders in 2024 to prioritize predictability in the face of economic uncertainties. They are turning to accurate forecasting and strict budget adherence to stabilize variable cloud spending. The evolution of AI-powered FinOps is opening new opportunities through chat-based assistants and analytics, elevating maturity, and addressing talent challenges. Despite facing AI/ML cost rises, cloud inflation, and resource scarcity, the need to optimize cloud costs and automate code with human oversight is becoming more critical amidst global chip shortages. Our partners' perspective  CyberArk predictions AI-driven FinOps is set to shape cloud decision-making by leveraging data insights and automation. It will be crucial to integrate FinOps with key roles like Architect, Sales, and Security. Automation will streamline data collection and enhance day-to-day FinOps tasks. Organizations will prioritize business continuity, with FinOps becoming a non-functional requirement akin to security and compliance. Aligning FinOps with efficient resource utilization and security will be vital for a comprehensive solution in the evolving operational landscape. Terasky predictions Gen-AI and FinOps are set to revolutionize infrastructure management, enhancing cloud efficiency. The evolution of FinOps necessitates more maturity in its operational phase, while Gen-AI is poised to assist companies in implementing best practices for new workloads. A comprehensive approach involving a mix of tools and solutions is vital for efficient FinOps services. Platforms are expected to offer automated processes that drive recommendations into action. Collaboration with a solutions integrator can further optimize cloud operations and enhance key performance indicators.   Get our in-depth analysis and what our partners think about FinOps future in our report! Final thoughts 2024 is shaping up to be a big year for FinOps and cloud tech. With Gen AI on the rise, companies are getting a clearer picture of their spending than ever before. With that in mind, monitoring often gets overlooked, so definitely make it a priority in your use. (There's a lot of money to be saved!) From what we've seen, our customers are making proactive steps on FinOps based on our insights and recommendations. Our platform focuses on reducing unnecessary cloud costs and streamlining operations; our data supports this! Woo! Remember its just a quick snapshot, though! Our full report dives deep into our data, offers forecasts from our customers, and highlights the must-knows from the latest FinOps reports. Check it out and here's to a fantastic 2024 in the cloud! Related Guides: Top 13 Cloud Cost Optimization: Best Practices for 2025 Understanding FinOps: Principles, Tools, and Measuring Success Related Products: Umbrella: Cost Management Tools  

Network Address Translation Gateway or NAT Gateway is a managed service provided by Amazon Web Services(AWS) that allows instances in a private Subnet within a Virtual Private Cloud(VPC) to connect services outside the VPC. NAT ensures that even though your instances can connect to the outside world, outside services can't establish a direct connection with them. It's a tool that secures the instances, simplifies network architecture, and reduces administrative overhead.   What are the connectivity types of NAT Gateway? There are two connectivity types of NAT Gateways: Public NAT Gateway: This is the most common type. It allows instances in a private subnet to connect to the Internet but cannot receive unsolicited inbound connections from the Internet. Private or NAT Gateway for VPC Peering: This type of NAT Gateway facilitates communication between resources in your VPC and resources in a peered VPC that does not have a public internet gateway. How does NAT Gateway work? NAT Gateway works as follows: In a typical cloud setup, you have public and private subnets within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Instances in the private subnet don't have direct internet connectivity. When an instance in the private subnet needs to access the internet (e.g., to download updates, connect to external APIs, or retrieve data), it sends the outbound traffic to the NAT Gateway. The NAT Gateway translates the private IP addresses of the instances in the private subnet to its public IP address. This means that internet resources see the traffic coming from the NAT Gateway's public IP address rather than the private IP addresses of the instances. After the translation, the NAT Gateway forwards the traffic to the internet. When the internet resources respond to the outbound traffic, they send the responses back to the NAT Gateway. The NAT Gateway receives the responses, translates the destination IP address back to the private IP address of the originating instance, and forwards the response to the instance in the private subnet.   Costs Associated with NAT Gateways NAT Gateway incurs two types of costs: Usage Costs(Hourly Charge): You are charged per hour that a NAT Gateway is provisioned and available in your VPC, regardless of whether it's actively processing traffic. The price varies depending on the AWS region of your NAT Gateway. Data Processing Charge: You are charged for every Gigabyte (GB) of data that passes through the NAT Gateway. This includes outbound traffic from your private instances to the internet and any return traffic generated in response to those outbound requests. What are the benefits of NAT Gateway? The benefits of NAT Gateway are as follows: Public Internet Access: NAT Gateway allows resources within private subnets to access the Internet for tasks such as downloading updates, accessing external APIs, or fetching data without exposing their private IP addresses to the Internet. Improved Security: NAT Gateways allow you to keep your instances in private subnets within your VPC anonymous. This isolates them from the public Internet, significantly reducing the attack surface for malicious actors. Only authorized outbound traffic can flow through the NAT Gateway, minimizing the risk of unauthorized access to your resources. Simplified Management: NAT Gateways eliminate the need to provision, configure, and maintain your own NAT instances. This simplifies your network architecture and reduces your administrative overhead. AWS manages the underlying infrastructure and ensures its availability and scalability. Scalability: NAT Gateways can automatically scale up or down based on your instances' outbound traffic demands. This ensures that your NAT Gateway can handle traffic spikes without performance degradation. You don't need to adjust resources to meet changing demands manually. Cost-Efficiency: While there are costs associated with NAT Gateways (hourly rate and data processing), they can sometimes lead to cost savings compared to alternative solutions. For example, if your instances only require outbound connections to specific AWS services, NAT Gateways might be more cost-effective than using individual Elastic IP addresses for each instance. High Availability: AWS NAT Gateway is designed to be highly available, with built-in redundancy across multiple availability zones (AZs). This ensures that your outbound internet traffic remains uninterrupted even in a failure in one availability zone. Monitoring and Logging: AWS provides monitoring and logging features for NAT Gateways, allowing users to track outbound traffic patterns, monitor usage, and troubleshoot connectivity issues effectively. This visibility helps in optimizing resource usage and identifying potential security threats.   FinOps for NAT Gateways FinOps is an operating model that brings financial accountability to variable spending in the cloud. It ensures that cloud costs are aligned with a company's business objectives. Implementing FinOps principles can help optimize costs associated with using NAT Gateways. With Umbrella, FinOps teams can easily classify and divide all their cloud costs by business structures like apps, teams, and lines of business using business mappings.   Umbrella helps identify and allocate the shared costs of different business departments in a company. Its business mappings help split the shared-costs across different departments using FinOps models. Such as: Even split: the targeted costs are split evenly among all departments. By percentage: the targeted costs are split by custom percentages. Proportional: the targeted costs are divided based on the relative percentage of direct costs.   Umbrella empowers FinOps teams to: Boost engineering trust in NAT Gateway spending by providing clear data and insights. Pinpoint, which gateway is acting as a cost center. Track overall cloud costs across different business areas over time. Find unallocated gateway costs to optimize budgeting. Simplify cost allocation for clear accountability (showback) and cost recovery (chargeback). Make strategic investments based on accurate data.   How to Optimize NAT Gateway Cloud Costs using Umbrella? Umbrella Cloud Cost is a valuable tool for identifying and reducing idle resource problems associated with your AWS NAT Gateways, ultimately optimizing your cloud spending. Umbrella can be leveraged in the following ways to optimize NAT Gateway costs: Identifying Idle NAT Gateways: Umbrella leverages machine-learning algorithms to analyze your NAT Gateway usage patterns. It can identify provisioned NAT Gateways but not actively process significant outbound traffic. These instances are idle and accumulate usage costs but not data processing costs. Such instances can be terminated if found redundant. Visualization and Alerting: Umbrella provides insightful dashboards and visualizations that display your NAT Gateway usage metrics over time. You can easily see which NAT Gateways are experiencing low traffic and potentially incurring unnecessary costs. Umbrella can also be configured to send alerts when a NAT Gateway exhibits a sudden drop in traffic or falls below a predefined utilization threshold. This allows you to take proactive action and optimize resource allocation.   Recommendations and Insights: Umbrella uses ML analysis to provide tailored recommendations for optimizing your NAT Gateway usage. For example: Right-sizing your NAT Gateways: If you're using a larger NAT Gateway than necessary for your traffic volume, Umbrella might recommend downsizing to a smaller, more cost-effective option. Scheduling on/off times: If your application has predictable usage patterns with off-peak hours, Umbrella could recommend automating the creation and deletion of NAT Gateways during those times. This allows you to pay only for the time you need the resource. Exploring alternative solutions: Umbrella might identify situations where alternative solutions like VPC endpoints could be more cost-effective for specific outbound traffic needs.   How does Umbrella allocate NAT Gateway costs? The majority of the cost management tools provide filtering and grouping capabilities that combine multiple filters and tags into a category and use that as the basis for cost allocation, this results in overlapping costs, which leads to inaccurate reporting. To tackle this issue, Umbrella provides the capability of business mapping that empowers you to: Accurately map spending data to relevant business dimensions without overlap Assign shared costs equitably Report cloud spend in a way that is customized to your organization’s needs Umbrella allows you to allocate NAT Gateway costs to specific departments, projects, or applications within your organization. This cost allocation helps you track spending more granularly and identify areas for potential cost optimization across your cloud infrastructure. Umbrella’s cost allocation tools provide comprehensive reports that detail your NAT Gateway usage and related costs. These reports can be used to monitor your progress in cost optimization efforts and make informed decisions for future resource allocation.