When Azure Savings Plans for Compute were introduced in late 2022, many assumed they were designed to replace Azure Reservations (Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances). But that’s not the case — and it still isn’t. Instead, Azure Savings Plans and Reservations can work hand in hand and complement your other Azure cost optimization strategies. That said, maximizing the benefits of each option isn’t always straightforward.

For DevOps teams, ideal cloud deployment tools mean automation, consistency, and operational reliability. For CTOs, they ensure faster time to market, scalability, and efficiency. And for CFOs, cost-effectiveness and healthy margins are the name of the game. This is our hand-picked list to help you choose the right cloud deployment tools for your organization’s specific needs.

Managing and knowing where your cloud spend goes is nearly impossible without the right cloud cost management tools. Cloud-native, distributed technologies like microservices, containers, and Kubernetes can make it even more difficult to have full visibility into resource usage — and the associated costs. This cost information is also often buried in rows and columns of text on cloud providers’ bills. In addition, a lot of cloud cost management tools are clunky and inexact.

Cloud waste occurs when cloud resources are unutilized or underutilized. Resource under-utilization occurs when more resources are procured than are actually needed by virtual machines (VMs) at runtime. Cloud providers continue to charge for these provisioned resources regardless of whether they are used or not, resulting in unchecked expenditure.

A reliable notifications system can send highly scalable, multi-protocol messages — via email, SMS, or apps — all from one platform. For example, you can send timely cost anomaly alerts directly to your developers on Slack to alert them to potential overspending before it becomes a board meeting emergency. So, what does this have to do with Amazon SNS pricing? Let’s start at the beginning to better understand what you’re paying for when you get that AWS SNS bill.

The weather may be frightful in most parts of the U.S. right now, but these cloud cost updates are pretty delightful (if we do say so ourselves). Here’s the top cloud news that dropped in January 2025: Enjoy!

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 200 fully-featured services. AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Elastic Container Service (ECS), Amazon Lambda, and the AWS Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) are some of the most critical services you should become familiar with. We’ve previously covered Amazon ECS vs. EKS vs. Fargate for managing and deploying containers. This guide will explain how Amazon EC2, Lambda, ECS, and S3 compare and when you’ll want to use each.

Datadog and New Relic didn’t become some of the best observability platforms today by accident. Unlike traditional monitoring tools, both are built from the ground up to be cloud-native. This design is crucial for tracking system health across hybrid cloud infrastructure, modern applications, and microservices/containerized architectures. Both platforms also offer more flexible pricing models than the traditional subscription-based pricing you’ll see elsewhere.

Effective cost management and operational efficiency are paramount for organizations aiming to thrive and maintain a competitive edge. By implementing robust cost management strategies and streamlining operations, companies can enhance productivity, reduce unnecessary expenditures, and foster both customer and employee satisfaction.

AWS SP/RI policy changes In a significant move, AWS announced policy changes to the use of Reserved Instances (RIs) and Saving Plans (SPs), which are set to take effect on June 1, 2025. These changes are particularly crucial for MSPs, resellers, and other organizations that rely on shared RIs and SPs to manage cloud costs.

Amazon Aurora offers up to five times the throughput of standard MySQL and three times that of PostgreSQL. Its architecture combines the database engine with a cloud-native, SSD-based storage system built for high I/O operations to achieve this. That said, AWS Aurora pricing can be a real headscratcher for customers, with concerns about the cost structure, pricing components, and ways to cut expenses.

In the last few weeks, industry headlines once again brought the need for businesses to have complete cost visibility and proactive cost management strategies to the forefront of the constantly accelerating cloud and AI landscape. That’s why we’re excited to announce our latest product releases, designed to supercharge your cloud cost intelligence with deeper integrations into industry leaders like AWS and OpenAI.

What is cloud cost anomaly detection? Cloud cost anomaly detection is a perfect example of the saying “a penny saved is a penny earned.” Imagine your monthly cloud bill suddenly skyrocketing despite no new services being added to your app.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced Savings Plans to offer customers a more flexible and discounted pricing model than Reserved Instances. Like Reserved Instances, AWS Savings Plans offer discounts for longer-term commitments. You can learn more about the differences between Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans here. In this post, we’ll quickly explain AWS Savings Plans, how they work, and what they can and cannot do for you.

Containers are a big deal today. They are software units that contain all the code, runtime, and dependencies required to run a distributed application. Thus, containers help engineers test and run apps without compatibility issues on any device and platform. Organizations can use containers to reduce engineering costs, speed up deployments, develop and test AI models, and automate more processes. You probably want those benefits as well.

Tool sprawl within organizations doesn’t just create a fragmented user experience; it poses a real threat to enterprises’ bottom lines. Consider these statistics: This fragmentation significantly limits worker productivity. IT leaders spend hundreds of hours trying to manage multiple tools, map their environments, and upkeep aging systems that are either outdated or simply no longer necessary.

Many companies migrate to the cloud and overlook costs in favor of innovation, speed, and flexibility. They assume that the cloud is inherently more cost-effective than on-premises infrastructure. However, the organizations soon realize that the same characteristics that make the cloud such an enticing and flexible resource can also lead to unexpectedly higher usage bills than expected. The challenge is to find the right balance between optimal system performance, engineering velocity, and cost.

If you're like most companies running large-scale, data- intensive workloads in the cloud, you’ve realized that you have significant quantities of waste in your environment. Smart organizations implement a host of FinOps and other activities to address this waste and the cost it incurs: … and the list goes on. These are infrastructure-level optimizations.

If you're like most companies running large-scale, data-intensive workloads in the cloud, you’ve realized that you have significant quantities of waste in your environment. Smart organizations implement a host of FinOps and other activities to address this waste and the cost it incurs: … and the list goes on. These are infrastructure-level optimizations.