Exploring Cloud Cost Management

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring Cloud Cost Management

    Cloud Cost Management in the Zurich release enables your organization to analyze and manage the full spectrum of cloud-related expenses. By continuously monitoring your cloud infrastructure, it helps you identify opportunities to reduce costs and optimize cloud resource usage through a streamlined, user-friendly interface.

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    Key Features

    • Cloud Cost Management Workspace: Provides executives, FinOps, practitioners, cloud managers, and administrators with complete visibility into cloud spend and usage for informed decision-making.
    • Rightsizing Resources: Offers automated recommendations to correctly size cloud resources based on actual usage, helping cloud administrators and application owners reduce costs.
    • Reservation or Saving Plans: Enables conversion from on-demand to reserved payment plans to decrease expenses for cloud administrators and application owners.
    • Unused Resources Identification: Detects high spend areas and stranded assets to target cost optimizations effectively.
    • Business Hours Automation: Identifies resources unused outside of working hours and automates turning them off and on, optimizing resource utilization.
    • Cloud Budgets: Supports budget allocation and monitoring for FinOps practitioners and cloud administrators.
    • Change Management Integration: Automates approval workflows for cloud optimization tasks within existing change management processes.

    Key Outcomes

    • Gain comprehensive visibility into cloud expenditures to drive cost-saving strategies.
    • Optimize resource allocation by rightsizing and adopting reservation plans.
    • Reduce waste by identifying and managing unused or underutilized cloud assets.
    • Increase operational efficiency by automating resource management during non-business hours.
    • Streamline budget management and approval processes for cloud cost optimizations.

    Learn more about Cloud Cost Management with a sample workflow and reviewing the benefits that it can provide for different users in your organization.

    Cloud Cost Management overview

    Cloud Cost Management helps you analyze the full range of costs related with cloud assets so you can identify and act on chances to save money and optimize operations.

    Cloud Cost Management workflow

    Cloud Cost Management continuously monitors your cloud infrastructure to analyze costs so you can identify and act on resources to save money and optimize operations.

    Figure 1. Monitor your cloud infrastructure
    Monitoring the cloud infrastructure to analyze costs of your cloud assets.

    Cloud Cost Management benefits

    Benefit Feature Users
    Optimize cloud costs and usage by gaining complete visibility of your cloud spend and usage through an intuitive and streamlined user interface. Cloud Cost Management Workspace Executives/FinOps Practitioners/Cloud Managers/Cloud Administrators
    Rightsize cloud resources by getting automated recommendations on how to reduce cloud costs by correctly dimensioning cloud resources to match usage. Rightsizing resources Cloud Administrators/Application owners
    Decrease costs by the conversion of on-demand payment plans to reservation plans for your cloud resources. Reservation or Saving plans Cloud Administrators/Application owners
    Identify cost optimizations targets by analyzing areas of high spend and stranded cloud assets. Unused resources Cloud Administrators/Application owners
    Turn off resources when not in use by identifying cloud resources that aren’t used outside normal working hours and automatically turn them off and on. Business hours Cloud Administrators/Application owners
    Allocate budgets Cloud budgets FinOps Practitioners/Cloud Administrators
    Automate optimization approvals by integrating cloud optimization tasks into your existing change management processes. Change Management FinOps Practitioners/Cloud Administrators