Taming the Cloud: A Common-Sense Approach to Cost Control

In the world of cloud computing, sophisticated cost optimization tools are a must. But, sometimes even the best tools can fall short without good old-fashioned common sense. A regular, practical cost review process is a simple, effective way to uncover hidden savings and help teams make smarter decisions. 

The following are five road-tested steps to get you there:

1. Zoom in: where are your costs really coming from?

To manage cloud investments effectively, you need full visibility into what’s driving costs. Slicing and dicing your data from multiple angles can help give you a clearer picture: 

• By account or subscription: naturally, you will want to identify which accounts are racking up the biggest bills, but don’t overlook the smaller ones—less obvious savings often hide there.
• By service type: sort by highest cost services. Keep an eye on those climbing the ranks—today’s low-cost service might be tomorrow’s budget-buster.
• By resource: drill down into high-cost resources and trace back to see what’s really behind the spend. You might just find something that’s been misallocated or overprovisioned.
• By project or group: group related resources to see the actual cost of an initiative. It’s a great way to flag runaway projects—or prioritize where to cut back.
• By location: your cloud footprint doesn’t always need to be equivalent in each region; the high-performance build deployed in one region may not be required in another. Consistency may be your objective, but there can be great savings to be found if you are able to build for the need only

2. Spot the climbing costs before they balloon

Looking at one month of billing data won’t always show the full picture. Instead, create a view of monthly cost trends—ideally over 6 to 12 months. This wider lens can reveal slow-but-steady increases, like a service creeping up 10% month over month or seasonality driven spikes.

Left unchecked, that growth can balloon into a serious cost problem. Spotting trends early gives you time to course-correct.

All cloud providers offer a means to set up budgets and alerts. Budgets can be set on projected spend, with alerts set to trigger early if you are on a trajectory that would lead to overspend. Waiting until you receive your bill is too late to address the potential overspend.

3. Give engineers a window into costs

Think of cloud engineering like shopping at a mall with no price tags. Engineers can spin up resources without seeing the cost implications—which makes it tough to build cost awareness into their decisions.

So, make it part of your process to share monthly cost reports with engineering teams. When they can see how their past builds are affecting the actual bill, they’re more likely to take cost into account moving forward.

Pro tip: Encourage engineers to share cost-saving tips and best practices with each other. Cost awareness is contagious in a good way.

4. Be on the lookout for smarter options

Don’t get stuck in “set it and forget it” mode. Continuously evaluate your cloud architecture and services to ensure you’re paying for what you really need. Here are a few areas to explore:

• Use Platform as a Service (PaaS) where possible—it’s often more cost-effective than Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
• Consider built-in regional redundancy: instead of manually replicating backups across regions and therefore incurring costs on additional storage and transfer, consider services that offer built-in regional and global redundancy.
• Implement failover and redundancy services: Rather than maintaining a high-cost, cross-region cluster, investigate database services that handle failover and redundancy for you.
• Weigh the pros and cons of licensing models: SQL Services, for instance, offer multiple tiers (Basic, Standard, Premium) plus different pricing models (vCore, DTU, eDTU). Make sure you are choosing the right fit for your usage patterns.

5. Put the right workloads in the right place

While segmentation is usually a security-driven decision, it's also a smart move for cost control.

Group and classify your resources based on performance needs and business importance. It’s easy for a basic workload to “inherit” the excessive costs of a more critical resource just because they’re grouped together. Avoid this domino effect by placing each workload in its appropriate tier—both for security and cost control.

The Bottom Line

Cloud cost optimization isn’t just about tools and automation—it’s also about mindset. Regularly reviewing your cloud spend with a critical eye, sharing visibility across teams, and staying curious about alternatives can help you keep costs in check without sacrificing performance.

Think of it as cloud cost management with a human touch—and a little common sense.