A Basic Cloud Cost Software has these functionalities:

• Cloud Resource usage and cost tracking across multiple platforms
• Identification of underutilized resources
• Analyze, Monitor & Optimize cloud costs
• Alerts and notifications to address issues in real-time
• Cost optimization and Right sizing recommendation for efficient cloud resource usage

What is a Cloud Management Platform?

A Cloud Management Platform or CMP is a software solution that allows businesses to view, manage and automate various aspects of cloud computing environments. CMPs primarily provide an all-in-one centralized control panel for monitoring and managing resources across multiple cloud platform providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Basic features of Cloud Management Platform include:

• Provisioning and Orchestration of cloud resources like VMs, Storage, and networks
• Automate load balancing and scaling for better performance & availability
• Live reporting and monitoring of cloud resource usage
• Automated Backup and disaster recovery
• Managing multiple cloud providers in one place with Multi-Cloud Management

Key Benefits of a Cloud Management Platform

If you are still not convinced why you need a Cloud Management Platform, here are a few handpicked advantages of a Cloud Management Platform and how they can be a game changer for your business:

• Cloud Management Platform for Analysis: CMPs are often used for Analysis as they provide a birdeye view of all the cloud providers on a single screen. They provide information on Cost spent, Performance, and more. As a result, this helps in understanding various aspects of the cloud. By analyzing the data, cloud costs can be reduced and these resources can be optimized. This also helps in the expansion of a business by efficiently utilizing the cloud resources and automating this at a scale. This leads to overall cost savings, improved efficiency, and better visibility of cloud resources to the management.
• Cloud Management Platform for Monitoring: CMPs are primarily used for monitoring as they provide a centralized location for monitoring cloud resources across multiple platforms. This allows businesses to keep an eye on various aspects of the Cloud in real time. This helps companies to stay alert and addresses issues quickly.  This can help to improve their uptimes and reduce losses by instantly alerting if any issues. Overall, this leads to improved uptime, better performance and compliance with security standards for the company.
• Cloud Management Platform for Optimizing: CMPs have a key role in optimizing cloud computing environments. Often, they include tools and features designed to optimize cloud costs, usage, and compliance, as well as optimize the overall performance, security, and compliance of the cloud resources. The detailed information provided by the CMP dashboard allows better cost optimization opportunities and space for scaling. This helps in better cost savings, improved performance, and more efficient operations for the company.
• Cloud Management Platform for Management: CMPs have a key role in managing cloud resources as they provide a centralized location for managing various aspects of CCE. The tools and features built-in help to automate tasks and streamline various cloud operations.

Who Uses Cloud Cost Management Software?

Businesses of all sizes use cloud cost management software as a way to manage their costs. It can be from small startups to large organizations that are looking for ways to monitor and analyze their cloud computing expenses.

• Cloud Cost Management Software for FinOps: The FinOps team uses Cloud Cost Management software to monitor multiple aspects of their cloud computing. It allows tracking & management costs across multiple cloud service providers, forecasting future costs, automating notifications, and automating security and compliance management. This helps the FinOps team to ensure compliance and security while managing their cloud environment efficiently.
• Cloud Cost Management Software for Finance: For any given business, Cloud expenses are one of the huge chunks of their expenses. The finance team uses Cloud Cost Management software to help them monitor and control their cloud expenses. This ensures funds are diverted to the right areas by identifying areas for cost reduction in cloud spending. Additionally, they can collaborate with the Engineering team to identify different cost-cutting opportunities within the company to save & divert funds.
• Cloud Cost Management Software for DevOps: DevOps being the backbone and operators of the Cloud, the CCMs can help DevOps optimize their cloud spending by providing better visibility of their usage and costs in different areas, identifying inefficiencies, and making better recommendations for cost savings. DevOps can use these kinds of tools to track spending across multiple services, set budgets, and alerts, and scale down resources that are unnecessary.
• Enterprises and large organizations: With many employees, departments, and business units, it can be difficult for large organizations to keep track of their cloud costs and identify areas for cost savings. Cloud cost optimization tools can provide a centralized view of cloud spending, making it easier to identify and reduce unnecessary costs.
• Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs): SMBs may have limited resources and budgets, and thus it is important for them to optimize their cloud costs. Cloud cost optimization tools can help them identify and reduce unnecessary costs, allowing them to better manage their budget and grow their business.
• DevOps teams and developers: Developers and DevOps teams are often responsible for managing cloud resources and costs. Cloud cost optimization tools can provide them with the insights and automation they need to optimize cloud usage and costs, without impacting the performance or availability of their applications.

Cloud cost optimization tools can help these organizations in multiple ways:

• Reduce cloud costs by identifying and shutting down underutilized resources
• Improve cloud infrastructure efficiency
• Provide real-time insights and recommendations to make informed decisions
• Ensure compliance with company policies and industry regulations
• Optimize usage of cloud services with different pricing models such as reserved instances, Spot instances and on-demand instances.

Overall, cloud cost optimization tools are essential for any organization that wants to manage and reduce their cloud costs while maintaining compliance and governance.

Key Benefits of a cloud cost software

Cloud Computing is a game changer for most of the businesses out there and according to a report, over 94% of the business claimed saw an improvement in security after switching to the cloud and 91% said the cloud makes it easier to meet government compliance requirements. Let’s check out some key benefits of Cloud Cost Software:

1. Cost Savings
2. Security
3. Flexibility
4. Mobility
5. Insight
6. Increased Collaboration
7. Quality Control
8. Disaster Recovery
9. Loss Prevention
10. Automatic Software Update
11. Competitive Edge
12. Sustainability

Open Source Cloud Cost tools

If you are looking for the best Open Source & Free Cloud cost tools then you check these GitHub repositories

1. Project Koku - https://github.com/project-koku/koku
2. Komiser - https://github.com/tailwarden/komiser
3. Infracost - https://github.com/infracost/infracost

Top Cloud Cost Softwares in 2023

With the plethora of Cloud Cost software available in the market, choosing the right one for your business might be a bit tricky. Imagine finding an unused or overprovisioned cloud resource, wouldn’t that be a heartbreaker?

So, it’s important to invest in strong cloud-cost software that will pay itself in the long run. We’ve published an in-depth article about the top cloud-cost software that will make your life easier.

Read it here: Top Cloud Cost Software

How to choose the best cloud-cost software?

Cloud Cost software is a must these days with the high prices of the cloud providers and moreover the payment method they follow the “Pay-As-You-Go” model. This adds another level of difficulty as it becomes complicated to predict the cost of your bill each month.

If you use cloud cost software, you get different levels of information that can be useful to understand inefficient resources and decide whether it’s needed or not. This also helps to save money and divert funds for other resources that actually requires more spending.

There are a lot of Cloud Cost Software but choosing one might be a bit tricky.

1. Resource monitoring and tracking: Real-time monitoring and tracking of resources helps identify underutilized resources and allows for optimization of costs by reducing or eliminating those resources.
2. Reporting and analytics: Detailed reporting and analytics, such as custom reports and visualizations, provide insights into cloud spend and usage patterns, helping identify areas for cost optimization and making data-driven decisions to reduce costs.
3. Optimization of Reserved Instances and Spot Instances: Optimizing the use of Reserved Instances and Spot Instances, cost-saving features provided by cloud providers, can help reduce costs. Reserved Instances allow reserving a set amount of resources for a period of time at a discounted rate. Spot Instances allow bidding on spare capacity at even lower prices.
4. Cost forecasting: Forecasting future costs based on historical usage patterns and future usage estimates helps identify potential cost increases and take action to reduce costs before they occur.
5. Multi-cloud support: The ability to manage costs across multiple cloud providers enables optimization of costs and usage across all cloud environments, even if different providers are used, and helps identify and take advantage of the best cost-saving opportunities.