The way organisations develop, run, and compete is still being changed by cloud computing. You might also have concerns about how to budget your money, anticipate your expenses, or pay for the services you use, regardless of whether you’re just getting started with cloud computing or already have a significant cloud presence. Azure offers a range of tools and services to assist in addressing these concerns and ensuring you receive the best deal possible at each phase of your cloud journey.
This blog post will walk you through how to approach and consider pricing as you move towards cloud adoption. Additionally, we’ll provide an example of how a fictitious digital media company would handle their Azure price requirements as they move from planning and assessment to setting up and managing their cloud solutions. You’ll be better equipped to choose the Azure pricing plan that best suits your cloud demands and company goals after reading this post.
To understand Azure pricing options, find resources and assistance
You might want to familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of cloud service pricing and your available payment methods if you’re new to Azure or cloud computing in general. From pay-as-you-go and free tiers to commitment and rewards, Azure offers a range of price choices to meet diverse demands and scenarios. A synopsis of each choice is provided below:
Free tier: You can sign up for Azure at no cost and enjoy over 25 services for a whole year, along with a $200 credit that can be used during the first 30 days. With certain restrictions and limitations, you can also utilise certain services for free, like Azure App Service, Azure Functions, and Azure DevOps. Without any up-front fees or obligations, the free tier is an excellent way to investigate Azure and discover how it functions.
Pay-as-you-go: Depending on your measured consumption and the unit costs of each service, you can only pay for the services you use or consume. For instance, you can pay per data exchange, VM hour, or storage capacity. Pay-as-you-go lets you adjust consumption and costs to meet changing needs.
Calculate the expected expenses of an Azure project
To make an educated decision about proceeding, you must have a precise and realistic assessment of the costs associated with your project if you are planning to create or migrate it to Azure. Azure offers a number of resources and tools to assist with this choice, including:
Total Cost of Ownership calculator: Use this tool to estimate Azure savings for on-premises workloads. Entering your setup details shows the expenses of running your servers, storage, and network on-premises vs. on Azure.
Azure Migrate lets you plan and assess your Azure migration. You may identify and evaluate your on-premises servers, databases, and apps and get recommendations for Azure services and scalability options. Additionally, you may track your preparation and progress and receive predicted expenses and savings for your relocation scenario.
Azure Architecture Centre: This resource offers advice on how to construct Azure solutions using well-known patterns and practices, such as Windows VM deployment, OpenAI chatbots, and end-to-end analytics using Azure Synapse that takes cost variables into account.
Determine how much Azure services and goods will cost
When it comes time to budget for deploying particular Azure services, you might want to take a look at the various pricing plans and deals that are offered for each service. For certain Azure services, like the following, Azure offers tools and advice on how to budget:
Azure price calculator: Calculate your monthly expenses by taking into account your anticipated consumption as well as configurations such virtual machine series and area.
Details pages for product pricing: On the pricing details page for each Azure service, you can find comprehensive pricing information. The unit costs, service tiers, pricing strategy, and regional availability are all visible.
The Azure computing savings plan is a simple and adaptable approach to save up to 65% off of specific compute services when compared to pay-as-you-go costs. When you commit to spending a set hourly amount for one or three years, the savings plan unlocks reduced costs on computing services. You may pay in full up front or conveniently on a monthly basis.
Azure Reservationsresources for one or three years to save up to 72% on your cloud expenses, such as virtual machines (VMs), SQL databases, or Cosmos databases. Easily calculate your investments with a single upfront payment that improves forecasting and budgeting. Alternately, you can reduce your initial outlay of funds by choosing a free monthly payment plan.
Azure Hybrid Benefit: Utilise your current SQL Server, Windows Server, and Software Assurance licences along with your active subscriptions to take advantage of the Azure Hybrid Benefit and save money. When you combine Azure Hybrid Benefit, bookings discounts, and Extended Security Updates, you may save up to 85% in comparison to conventional pay-as-you-go rates and get the lowest cost of ownership. Additionally, you can use Azure Hybrid Benefit with your current Linux subscription.
Handle and maximise your Azure investments
If you’re already using Azure and want to make the most out of your investment for your ongoing Azure workloads, you might want to analyse your expenses and utilisation and search for methods to improve your investments. Azure gives you access to a number of resources and tools to aid with this process, including:
Microsoft Cost Management: You can monitor and analyse your Azure spending, as well as set and manage alerts and budgets, by using Microsoft Cost Management with Copilot. In addition to seeing your cost trends and anomalies, you may also view your cost breakdown by service, resource group, or subscription. Additionally, suggestions on how to minimise your expenses are available.
Azure Advisor: Personalised and practical advice on enhancing the efficiency, security, dependability, and affordability of your Azure resources may be obtained by using Azure Advisor. With a few clicks, you can implement each tip and view the possible savings and advantages.
FinOps on Azure: By promoting an environment of accountability, cross-team cooperation, and data-driven decision-making, you can use FinOps best practices on Azure to strengthen your company. With better organisational alignment, this strategy can help you get the most out of your investments and expand your company faster.
An Examples of a company’s cloud journey and required pricing
Let’s take a look at an example to show how a customer can select the right resources and pricing plan for their cloud journey. Contoso, a fictitious digital media company, wishes to create a new OpenAI Chatbot application in Azure and move their infrastructure. They would consider their Azure price requirements at every point of their journey as follows:
Thinking about Azure: Contoso would like to know how Azure price is determined. They test functionality by utilising the free tier to experiment with various Azure services. To investigate how some services are billed, they also make use of the pay-as-you-go concept.
Evaluate and schedule Azure projects: Contoso must forecast the cost of their project. They enter the TCO calculator with the details of their on-premises server infrastructure in order to compare the costs of operating on-premises vs Azure. In order to understand best practices for creating an OpenAI chatbot, they also utilise the Azure Architecture Centre.
Azure deployment: Contoso is prepared to move their environment and implement their chatbot application for their business. They would like to budget for the particular Azure services that will be required. Based on their anticipated usage and settings, they use the pricing calculator and product-specific pricing websites to determine their monthly expenditures. They buy Reservations in order to use Azure Databases and VMs that are reliable and consistent. Since they currently own Windows Server licences for on-premise use, they sign up for Software Assurance in order to receive credit for those licences when they deploy their virtual machines (VMs) and reduce operational expenses.
Azure post-deployment optimisation: Following several months of operating their environment on Azure, Contoso wishes to assess and streamline their workloads. Azure Advisor is used by them to receive tailored and useful suggestions on how to improve their cost-effectiveness. Based on these suggestions, they buy an Azure savings plan for computing to support their dynamic compute workloads, which may need them to adjust VM sizes and regions.
Find out more about Azure Pricing
We hope that this blog article has clarified for you how to think about Azure pricing when moving forward with cloud computing. Azure has price resources that meet your needs and ambitions, whether of whether you are just starting started, ready to launch, or seeking for ways to optimise. You can discover more resources, tools, and explanatory content on the Azure pricing overview page, where you can learn more about Azure pricing.
