I mainly use it for insights. It's about managing the cost of our resources and how to optimize where we can downsize or right-size resources.
It's mostly about analytics, and this is the first use case. Technically, there are multiple projects, like data integration, data cleansing, and maintaining data quality. There are a few of the underlying use cases. But the topmost or very first use case is analytics.
We have a dedicated cost management team to optimize costs.
Management would be difficult because right now I'm having one of the projects. And for that project, we are consuming multiple other services. There are storage, pipelines, multiple data functions, and Azure functions. So, the solution is made above multiple Azure components. And there are multiple environments. Like the development environment, the staging, and the production environment.
Even in production, we have beta and alpha. So it's too much of resources, and it's difficult to manually go through each and every resource every time and try to see where we are hitting the cost and where we can reduce the cost. So that's where the cost management comes in to achieve.
Azure Cost Management actually helps an organization primarily for cost forecasting. For example, I have a budget in mind for this year. Azure Cost Management includes a feature called resource forecasting. Based on current resource usage and projected demand (including any buffer you add for your projects), you can estimate your expected costs for next year. This information helps you build budgets for future periods. So, budgeting tools are very helpful in this regard.
Before we formally adopted Cost Management, based on current consumption, we estimated costs for development and user acceptance testing. These estimates were surprisingly accurate, around 90%. Without a tool like this, manual forecasting could lead to missed savings or even overspending.
There are many features in Azure Cost Management that are most effective in tracking and reducing cloud costs. The resource forecasting feature is invaluable. Secondly, the ability to drill down to the regional and resource level is incredibly helpful for pinpointing where my costs are accruing.
Improved integration with other solutions could definitely be beneficial.
I have been using it for more than five years now.
I would rate the stability a seven out of ten.
There are around a thousand end users using this solution in my organization.
I would rate the scalability a six out of ten. We have limited features. So, I have neutral views on scalability.
So, my feedback for customer service and support isn't specific to Cost Management, but for other resources like Power BI and Azure App Services, support can be slow. In some cases, I expect a quick turnaround.
We might need to repeat information when switching agents. So, this can be a continuous cycle. I spend extra time explaining things on each call. So, there's room for improvement.
We use AWS and some Google Cloud servers.
The vendor handles maintenance and troubleshooting.
My team has twelve members who handle things like advertisement, deployment, and cloud resource management.
However, there are different teams and people as it varies from project to project.
Compared to competitors, it's cost-effective. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being expensive.
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I would recommend using this product to others.