Finance Software

The Top 8 Cloud Cost Management Tools

Discover the top cloud cost management Tools with capabilities including data collection, data aggregation and consolidate, and visualization.

Last updated on Apr 22, 2024

Written by Alex Zawalnyski

Technical review by Laura Iannini

The Top 8 Cloud Cost Management Tools include:

1. Amazon CloudWatch
2. Cloudzero
3. Densify
4. HashiCorp Terraform
5. IBM Turbonomic
6. Microsoft Cost Management
7. Morpheus Cloud Cost Optimization
8. VMware Aria

Cloud cost management (sometimes referred to as cloud cost optimization) is the process of analyzing and planning surrounding cloud infrastructure to ensure processes are working optimally. Cloud cost management makes it possible for organizations to better understand and manage the demands and costs associated with cloud technologies. It tends to involve finding the most cost-effective way to maximize cloud usage and efficiency. At the same time, cloud cost management also ensures that you are investing in the necessary areas to result in comprehensive coverage and are not going to have capacity issues. Ultimately, it’s about ensuring that you have the right balance between cost and service.

As cloud infrastructure becomes more complex and integrated, it becomes ever more difficult to keep track of spending and value for money. Most public cloud models operate on a “pay for what you use” model. In theory, this is great. It means that you are only charged for the technology and capacity that you use. With proper management, this can result in significant cost savings compared with a limited, subscription model. However, if usage is not closely monitored and managed, it is very easy for spending to spiral. You may be paying to store information that you either don’t need to store or is already stored on-premises.

So, it is important for organizations to ensure that they have oversight of their cloud strategy, ensuring that all spending is necessary and accounted for. This is where a cloud cost management tool is an invaluable asset.

In this article, we’ll explore the top cloud cost management solutions available on the market. We’ll look at the key features that they offer, including the ability to collect, consolidate, and visually present data to make choosing the best solution for your organization easier.

Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and management platform designed to offer a comprehensive view and actionable insights for AWS, on-premises, and other cloud applications and infrastructure resources. It allows users to collect operational data (including logs and metrics) in a centralized platform. This centralization removes data segregation (when safe to do so), making management much easier. By offering automation and alarms (based on predefined thresholds), Amazon CloudWatch assists in streamlining infrastructure and application maintenance. The tool monitors applications, infrastructure, networks, and services. It also facilitates swift debugging through analysis of metrics, log analytics, and user requests, thereby reducing the mean time to resolution (MTTR).

The platform also provides powerful visualization of real-time logs, metrics, and event data in automated dashboards. It offers rapid visibility into metrics as well as logging data. This information can be retained for up to 15 months, facilitating historical analysis for cost optimization and real-time insights into streamlining applications and infrastructure resources. CloudWatch empowers users to proactively manage resource planning and monitor spending costs through automated actions activated upon reaching specified thresholds. This feature can be enhanced through machine learning model guidance.

Cloudzero

CloudZero’s platform offers in-depth analysis of your company’s cloud expenses. It not only informs you about the amount you are spending, but also details the specifics of your expenditure – what is costing you, why, and where. This helps to foster conversation between engineers and finance teams, ensuring that all parties can understand accurate ROIs. The platform is even capable of identifying the difference between necessary expenditure and wasteful spending; this allows for precise, swift actions to be taken. The tool is particularly useful when it comes to organizing costs as it doesn’t require tags, offering instant control and insight without hindering the business workflow.

The platform provides seamless visibility across both containerized and non-containerized environments, consolidating all spending information in a straightforward view. CloudZero is dedicated to offering secure cloud cost intelligence, backed by both SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliance, ensuring accuracy in its insights. The platform stands as a reliable solution for tracking costs related to different teams, projects, and features, offering stakeholders real-time updates on their financial standing, and notifying them of potential budget overruns.

Densify

Densify specializes in automating identification and monitoring cloud resource usage and spending. It aims to identify and maintain the optimal balance between performance and cost. Densify utilizes a combination of ML and deep analytics to analyse workload patterns, thereby pinpointing the most effective setup and configuration. This methodical approach helps in reducing application performance issues, increasing utilization, and lowering costs by preventing the overallocation. The platform integrates seamlessly with your deployment pipeline, automating the selection of instance types and scaling parameters for your cloud infrastructure. This helps to eliminate errors and continuously align resources with application requirements.

The platform carries out in-depth analysis of Auto Scaling Groups (ASGs) utilization and scaling behavior. It can facilitate simulations to define their optimal configuration. This results in a fine-tuned analysis of whether scaling groups are genuinely elastic or constrained by resource configurations. It also assists in determining optimal scaling parameters such as the minimum and maximum size of your ASG, helping to prevent resource waste and enhancing efficiency. Densify promotes collaboration through the automatic generation of impact analysis and recommendation reports. These can be shared with stakeholders to clearly articulate optimization recommendations.

HashiCorp Terraform

HashiCorp have developed a suite of tools (including Terraform, Vault, Consul, and Nomad) that are designed to help companies efficiently manage and streamline their cloud infrastructure, thereby leading to substantial savings. Through Terraform, companies have the capability to establish cost-centric policies that facilitate the automatic elimination of idle resources. The platform also assists with cost estimation before provisioning and enforcing operational best practices through the establishment of restrictive policies on cloud spending. HashiCorp’s selection of tools offer enhanced operational efficiency and reduce costs by eliminating unnecessary cloud resources and preventing over-provisioning.

Terraform enables developers to create integrations with existing VCS, CI/CD, and ITSM workflows. It promotes the use of approved, reusable infrastructure modules. This approach not only minimizes overhead but also streamlines project timelines, fostering an environment of collaboration and efficiency. Terraform integrates seamlessly with other HashiCorp tools such as Vault and Consul. These tools allow you to automate typical security and networking prerequisites, guiding developers towards secrets management and service networking throughout the organization. This tools allows organizations to maximize resource utilization through intelligent workload scheduling, autoscaling, and dynamic application sizing, whilst minimizing wasteful spending to achieving greater efficiency.

IBM Turbonomic

IBM’s Turbonomic platform is a practical solution that addresses the issues of ballooning costs and inefficient cloud operations. Turbonomic offers real-time, automated optimization of cloud costs and resources to ensure efficiency. This continuous automation aims to streamline the use of compute, storage, and network resources at every layer of the stack, facilitating more efficient operations. It also assists in modernizing data centers by automating application resource management, helping to optimize data center operations.

The platform can integrate seamlessly with a wide array of software, tools, processes, and workflows, ensuring that its capabilities can be fully utilized. IBM Turbonomic provides full-stack visualization, offering a comprehensive view of how each entity interacts and impacts every layer, promoting more cost-effective resourcing decisions. It also offers intelligent analytics, providing actionable insights and fostering peak performance of applications through dynamic resourcing. The Turbonomic platform supports cloud migration planning, thereby aiding businesses in formulating cost-effective strategies tailored to their specific cloud service needs. The platform empowers businesses to efficiently implement their hybrid cloud strategies while maximizing flexibility, scalability, and savings.

Microsoft Cost Management

Microsoft Cost Management is designed to help businesses streamline their cloud investments through enhancing visibility and accountability while focusing on cost optimization strategies. The platform encourages users to continuously monitor and report on their cloud usage and expenses through the Azure portal. One of Azure’s notable features is the Azure Advisor; this provides tailored suggestions for cost optimization through methods such as reservations, rightsizing, and eliminating idle resources. It also integrates customization options, which can be accessed through Microsoft Power BI connectors and Cost Management APIs. This allows for a more personalized and specific approach to managing cloud costs.

Microsoft Cost Management has recently integrated AI functionalities to further enhance its capabilities and accuracy of insights. Although this feature is still being developed, it aims to offer users deeper insights into costs, with forecasting and reporting features able to guide effective cloud management and optimization. The platform also aids in the implementation of governance policies, helping organizations foster a culture of accountability and efficiency. Microsoft Cost Management makes it easier to identify trends and promote cost-efficient practices. This way, organizations can work towards maximizing the return on their cloud investments.

Morpheus Cloud Cost Optimization

Morpheus Cloud Cost Optimization is an analytical tool designed to assist FinOps teams in managing their hybrid cloud expenses. Through integrations with hypervisors or clouds, it regularly inventories your assets, facilitating enhanced automation, detailed logging, and precise analytics. This gives you a reliable way of monitoring cloud expenditure and usage patterns. The platform can even sync with public cloud pricing daily, taking different currencies and pricing adjustments into account. Morpheus’ analytics engine is a vital aspect of the service, capable of comparing utilization and costs across various clouds, allowing you to make informed decisions. The platform also facilitates a clear view of projected cloud cost trends and other detailed metrics.

This functionality extends to offering detailed cost comparisons and analytics, enabling an understanding of cloud usage trends by different parameters such as user, group, cloud, and tenant. Morpheus simplifies budget management by offering tools to track summary costs and budgeting parameters. It also enables the implementation of cost optimization guidance by providing rightsizing recommendations based on CPU, RAM, and storage metrics. Morpheus can integrate with third-party tools for seamless cloud cost data analysis and allocation, positioning itself as an effective solution for cloud cost management.

VMware Aria

VMware Aria Cost, powered by CloudHealth, facilitates streamlined financial management and enhances operational collaboration in multi-cloud environments. This platform gives organizations the ability to visualize and manage data relating to their cloud infrastructure, aiding in custom reporting and analysis. Equipped with features for budget management and forecasting, VMware Aria Cost assists companies in configuring annual budgets, monitoring actual spend, and alerting stakeholders about potential budget overruns. The platform promotes improved resource utilization and can facilitate governance policies that automatically implement necessary adjustments in the cloud environment to ensure efficiency and optimization.

The platform’s features extend to resource and organization management, offering granular control over user access, asset allocation, and data sharing across various levels of organizational hierarchy. The FlexOrgs and Perspectives features allow a more nuanced approach to monitoring and analysis of cloud environments based on different business parameters. This encourages cost accountability and efficient resource usage. Additionally, it offers tools for migration planning, cost allocation, rightsizing, waste reduction, and anomaly detection, ensuring your cloud environment can be fully optimized.

Everything You Need To Know About Cloud Cost Management Tools (FAQ)

What Is A Cloud Cost Management Tool?

Cloud computing is an immensely valuable and varied aspect of the modern enterprise environment. It allows enterprises to function more efficiently, work flexibly, and reduce dependence on on-premises infrastructure. However, as cloud services have become more embedded in the way we work, the need to ensure cloud capabilities are properly managed has only grown; businesses need to maximize the return on investments for these technologies and use them to their full potential.

Cloud cost management tools allow organizations to optimize cloud spending. These tools are designed to monitor, analyze, and manage the costs and usage across the cloud platforms that an organization uses. They can then provide insights, analytics, and control mechanisms to ensure they are being used efficiently and configured optimally.

Cloud cost management tools are particularly useful in multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environments. These environments tend to utilize services from various cloud providers and therefore will need help in managing their various financial outputs. As there are multiple services being used in conjunction, there is a greater chance for oversight and resources being used ineffectively; as businesses contend with increasingly dynamic demands, there is a tendency to over-provision resources such as memory, CPU, and storage, which can subsequently lead to a disappointing return on investments.

How Do Cloud Cost Management Tools Work?

Cloud cost management tools assess and monitor how organizations make use of their cloud computing tools. This allows them to gain valuable insights into how resources are used and whether that represents a good value for money and return on investment. They can help to ensure that resources are correctly optimized and working as effectively as they can be.

There are various factors that may result in organizations spending more on cloud services than they had accounted for. These may include:

Memory and storage
Virtual machine instances
Training and support
Network traffic
Web services
Software licenses

When you consider the amount of data that organizations deal with, it is understandable that some of this can fall through the cracks. It would be very difficult to keep track of every aspect of (possibly multiple) cloud services unless you have a solution to streamline this process.

A comprehensive cloud cost management strategy, aided by an appropriate cloud cost management tool, is an important way of effectively managing the financial aspect of employing cloud services.

What Are The Features You Should Look For In a Cloud Cost Management Tool?

A good cloud cost management tool will typically include the following capabilities:

Data Collection – Your cloud cost management solution should connect to cloud providers and platforms via integrations or APIs. They can then gather all information relating to resource use, billing, or expenditure. In doing this they can gain insights into any virtual machines, databases, storage, networking, or other cloud service in use at the organization.
Aggregate And Consolidate Data – By bringing together data from various cloud accounts, regions, and services to a single, centralized location, you can gain a comprehensive overview of cost and spending.
Cost Allocation – Costs should be broken down by department, project, and team, allowing you to understand how resources are allocated and used. This makes it easier to attribute costs accurately and ensure all activities are budgeted for appropriately.
Historical Data Analysis – Through assessing historical data, then comparing this with real-time statistics, you can identify patterns and trends. This will help you predict future usage and ensure you have the capacity to meet demands.
Data Visualizations – To help explain the tool’s findings, there should be access to visual graphs, charts, and dashboards that clearly explain what is happening across your network. By presenting data in a way that is easily digestible, users can more easily understand cost trends and recognize any areas in need of changes. This also helps when sharing data with C-level executives – they may not readily engage with raw data but can easily make sense of a pie chart, for example.
Spending Comparison – By comparing expected spend versus actual spend, you can understand how accurate your budgeting has been. This also allows you to set limits on cloud spending and (based on historical data) plan for future spending trends.
Generate Custom Reports – With such extensive data analysis, the insights generated can be invaluable. Your solution should have a simple way of generating and exporting reports to detail specific metrics and projects to better inform decision-making and internal communications.

Overall, cloud cost management tools are an excellent resource for organizations looking to gain more visibility into their usage and efficiency. This has a direct impact on financial output and ROI. Through effective use of a cloud cost management platform, organizations can optimize their cloud resource usage and ensure that any decisions made regarding controlling and managing their cloud costs are as well-informed as possible.

Alex Zawalnyski

Journalist & Content Editor

Alex is an experienced journalist and content editor. He researches, writes, factchecks and edits articles relating to B2B cyber security and technology solutions, working alongside software experts. Alex was awarded a First Class MA (Hons) in English and Scottish Literature by the University of Edinburgh.

Laura Iannini

Cybersecurity Analyst

Laura Iannini is an Information Security Engineer. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity from the University of West Florida. Laura has experience with a variety of cybersecurity platforms and leads technical reviews of leading solutions. She conducts thorough product tests to ensure that Expert Insights’ reviews are definitive and insightful.