Some major cloud-based tools that can help small businesses to decrease expenses

Cloud computing originated a technology revolution for small businesses, providing them with the accessibility to various efficiencies that are usually available to large-scale companies. With the internet facility and web browsing, small businesses can avail themselves of the software and the cloud services as per their requirement, and they have to pay monthly for the service. Cloud computing allows companies to access everything such from data backup to customer relationship management tools.

Irrespective of the single cloud service provider you use in your business like AWS, GCP, or Azure, and using multi-cloud or hybrid cloud services for your business, you will spend money on the services, which you won’t be using. You should know the management of costs in the cloud environment.

Sometimes companies realize that they are spending their money often on the resources that remain unutilized. There are plenty of reasons that most resources get reeled up, stay unutilized or become unassigned for the operations. You need to analyze the resources, where your money gets to spend, and then cloud optimization is necessary to avoid unnecessary expenditure.

Although, you start the analysis for the cloud expenses or the money reserve for cost optimization, based on the past usage data, or initiate any progressive changes in your enterprise to manage the cloud costing for hassle-free working. So, you will need the specified tools available for expense management of cloud services.

There are many clouds costing management tools relevant to your business based on the size and complexity of your business. When you manage inventory on the cloud it provides easy and effortless work.  

The following tools are available for your consideration that you can select according to your business requirement:

1. Harness Cloud Cost Management Tool –

This tool is available for the modern-era software company in the cloud. Engineering, finance, and other teams can analyze the incoming costing and they can become proactive to visualize, manage and optimize the cloud costing in both the solo and collaborative way.

It is often used by the engineering, finance, and FinOps/cloud centre of excellence teams.

Advantages –

• This tool gives related information at a different level of the organization, without any tagging.
• It provides visible data of the cloud resources costing as per the utilization, idle, or unassigned category.
• It shows the savings suggestions for the complete workload and the justified information regarding the same, inclusive of the correct size.
• It runs the root cost analysis up to the resource level, with the possibility to link cloud events and implementation changes while using the Harness Continuous Delivery Platform.
• It can detect abnormalities, business budgeting, and forecasting functionalities which helps teams prevent unwanted cloud expenses.

2. AWS Cost Explorer Tool –

AWS Cost Explorer tool is a built-in tool designed by Amazon Web Services to assist you with exploring your costing. It’s a considerable tool for small scale businesses, although staff members usually find it tough to handle as it gets more subtle at times.

It is chiefly beneficial for financial institutions which require a high-level preview of their cloud costing and convenience for saving money for the entire cloud infrastructure.

Advantages –

• It’s a better solution for small scale businesses where limited staffing and a basic costing structure is available.
• It provides an efficient view of incoming costing for your cloud services.
• It offers suggestions based on the usage for saving the money you are spending on cloud services.
• You can even set the budgeting notifications with the tool.
• There are no extra charges involved for the AWS users.

3. GCP Billing Tool –

GCP Billing tool is a built-in tool by Google Cloud to provide an understanding of your GCP cloud bill. It’s remarkable for the beginning and on a smaller scale. However, the users find it tough to use it as it’s unable to provide minute detailing.

It is helpful for financial institutions which require immense level preview for the costs and recommendations to save the money for their entire infrastructure.

 Advantages –

• It’s a better solution for the small scale enterprises where simple budgeting and small teams are present.
• It gives an understandable view of the incoming costs.
• It guides you on saving your money as per the usage.
• You can set the budgeting notifications and how to control the GCP consumption.
• It won’t cost any extra charges to the users.

4. Azure Cost Management Tool –

The Azure Cost Management and billing tool by Microsoft Azure offers you an understanding of Azure cloud bill teams, an efficient view of costing into Azure cloud and some excellent integrations to examine more.

This tool is beneficial for finance companies that need a minute detailing of costing and guidance for the cost-efficiency of their infrastructure.

Advantages –

• This tool is best for small scale enterprises having a low budget and limited employees.
• You can integrate with PowerBI and AWS for better reporting and dashboards.
• It will give you suggestions on how to save costs according to the usage.
• You can set the budgeting alerts.
• There are no extra charges for the users.

5. Apptio Cloudability Tool –

Apptio Cloudability tool is a tool that assists the users to see the expenses and recommends for the management and optimizations. You can even visualize the preview of the costing profile during cloud migration.

It is more beneficial for the FinOps and finance institutions.

Advantages –

• It provides visibility into the multi-cloud services including AWS, GCP, and Azure.
• It gives you cost-effective suggestions including, your workloads, reserved details of purchases and correct sizing.
• It has a tag explorer feature with which you can search for any missing tags in your infrastructure.
• It can detect irregularities, helps in budgeting, and the forecasting feature assists to prevent any extra cloud expenses.

6. Cloudhealth by VMWare Tool –

Cloudhealth is a tool that governs cloud cost management. It is the only tool of its type in the cloud management tool market. It helps the users to get the visibility of expenses, provides suggestions on optimizing them and creates policies to achieve compliance and financial management requirements.         

It is beneficial for finance companies.

Advantages –

• It gives governing features to manage and create financial controls.
• It will provide the correlation between cloud deployments with the security risk involvement.
• It encourages multiple-cloud and hybrid cloud costs visibility.
• It gives suggestions for cost-efficiency for your workloads involving the reserved instance purchasing and correct sizing.
• It allows the forecasting and budgeting to prevent going over budget.

7. Spot by NetApp Tool –

The spot tool is a cloud management tool that guides companies to automate cloud optimization based on data. It is often compared with the traditional practices that emerge opportunities. Although the decision is over the companies for implying the tool, it makes the Spot tool a cloud management tool.

It is mainly helpful for the engineering teams, whereas the second choice for the finance teams.

Advantages –

• It gives automation ability to the companies for the optimization of cloud infrastructure, which involves container setups.
• It aids multi-cloud visibility including AWS, GCP and Azure.
• It gives more manageable steps for the optimization suggestions.
• It reflects those cost trends that show irregularities based on usage.
• It will reflect the forecast of expenses based on the past usage data.

8. Kubecost Tool –

This tool gives visibility towards the Kubernetes resources of the organization to minimize the expenses and avoid resource-based outages. The tool targets the identification of costs and optimization events of Kubernetes.

This tool is beneficial for the engineering teams.

Advantages –

• It targets assigning and optimization of Kubernetes costs.
• It gives guidance to enhance infrastructure and prevent outages.
• It provides visibility of costs approximately in real-time.

Conclusion

There are numerous tools available for the companies to utilize, so the correct tool selection depends on the business requirement. With the advancement of companies in cloud management strategies and enterprise developments, it is necessary to take responsibility for cloud costs. Cloud expense management helps companies to manage and optimize the cloud costs and helps them with effective budgeting.