If your business has predictable compute workloads and wants to save on Azure spend, Azure Reserved Instances can make you the FinOps department’s new favorite person. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Before we tell you how you can start saving on your cloud spend, let’s define a few terms.

n our previous exploration of The Punchcard Paradigm, we traced the roots of modern compliance practices back to the early days of computing. We saw how the physical constraints of punchcards shaped programming practices and how those practices lingered long after the technology had evolved. Now, let’s dive deeper into why modern compliance is more critical than ever in today’s digital landscape.

Cloud migration is the process of moving your infrastructure, applications, and data to the cloud. While the potential benefits—like cost savings, scalability, and modernization—are significant, the risks are just as high if you don’t have a solid plan in place. Without clear strategies, you could face unexpected costs, technical challenges, and security issues.

Prometheus and its querying language, PromQL, have several functions that perform various calculations on their data. One of the most widely used functions is rate(); however, it is also one of the most misunderstood.

If cost optimization is your only reason for adopting Kubernetes and containers, you might be in for a rude surprise — many companies find that costs increase after moving to Kubernetes. Even companies who adopt Kubernetes for other reasons, like time-to-market advantages, should follow basic cost control best practices to stay within the budget. Optimizing cloud costs related to running Kubernetes doesn’t have to involve trade-offs for performance or availability.