Conducting Microsoft True-Ups is critical for organizations to maintain compliance with their Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) and ensure they only pay for the licenses they use. However, the True-Up process can be complex and challenging, requiring a deep understanding of Microsoft licensing rules, accurate inventory information, and accurate analysis of software deployments.

IT departments often face challenges determining the licenses required for Windows Server. Inventory information may be stored in multiple systems and tools, leading to missing sources or inaccuracies in the recorded data. The different licensing calculator tools and editions with varying license rules add to the complexity of license calculation. 

Determining the Edition

Accurate inventory information is crucial for creating a correct license position. However, traditional software asset management (SAM) tools may not have the capability to determine the edition installed, leading to assumptions during software audits that can be costly. Even if the tools accurately record information, the data may not always be up-to-date, especially with the addition of new devices to the network or changes in deployments.

One of the Biggest Challenges Faced

One of the biggest challenges in Microsoft True-Up is ensuring cost-effectiveness in licensing. IT departments may assign licenses to meet software contract compliance without considering alternative solutions. This results in overspending on licensing—like a Fortune 500 customer spending over $200,000 on Windows Server licenses for a cluster. The customer’s SAM tool and reseller calculated the number of licenses needed but failed to consider the specifics of the deployments. Further analysis showed that the cluster was a Linux cluster with a small percentage of Windows Servers, and the Windows licenses were for Commvault. By changing the Commvault configuration, the customer reduced their Windows licenses by $200,000.

Conducting a Microsoft True-Up requires expertise, tools, and resources to optimize Windows, saving time and money. An understanding of Microsoft licensing rules, accurate inventory information, how to install management tools, and effective analysis of software deployments are necessary to ensure compliance, cost-effectiveness, and the best return on investment in Microsoft licensing.

Optimize Their Windows Licensing with the Right Expertise and Tools

Annual True-Ups are required for organizations to maintain compliance with their EA and only pay for the licenses they use. The process can be complex and challenging, but organizations can optimize their Windows with the right expertise and tools, saving time and money. Whether working with a licensing expert or utilizing a service to support the True-Up process, organizations can be confident in the accuracy of their Microsoft licensing and the cost-effectiveness of their deployments. 

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Did you know that the typical business spends $2.5 million annually on cloud services? That’s a sizable amount, so it’s crucial to make sure you’re making the most of your Azure cloud expenditure.

As more and more organizations move to Azure, they are discovering that their cloud spending can creep up on their IT budget if they’re not cautious. By being proactive and mindful of these potential budget traps, you can keep your Azure cloud costs in check and ensure that they remain a wise investment for your organization. 

1- Placing Resources in the Wrong Subscription

Choosing the right sort of subscription is one of the first steps in establishing a new Azure membership. Production and non-production subscriptions are the two main categories. Because production assets often cost more than non-production resources, storing resources under the incorrect type of subscription could lead to greater expenses.

Before placing resources, there are a few pointers regarding production and non-production subscriptions that you need to keep in mind:

• For performance reasons, you can use non-production subscriptions to house specific Azure features available. Without ever subjecting them to your production environment, you can activate information that will guide for these test services in your non-production subscription.
• Azure dev/test subscriptions can be used as segregated sandbox setups. These sandboxes assist with data security and privacy concerns by enabling managers and programmers to quickly construct and destroy sets of Azure resources.

Note: The appropriate costs in production and non-production situations sometimes differ.

2- Not Deallocating or Deleting Chargeable Resources 

It should come as no surprise that cloud users end up using and paying for more cloud infrastructure than necessary. It’s normal for businesses using the cloud at scale to find themselves unable to explain extra 20% or more of the functioning cloud resources. Many of those unmonitored services are “orphaned infrastructure,” idling cloud assets in our ecosystem that have no economic purpose, even though some of them might still serve genuine corporate goals. 

It’s hardly surprising that entire divisions of experts and product suppliers have appeared to assist clients in finding and terminating abandoned assets in order to reduce their Azure costs. Since the dawn of the digital age, cloud “sprawl,” much like VM sprawl in the early 2010s, has been a significant issue, and it continues to do so, demonstrating how complex the issue truly is.

Few people are aware of the serious security risk that these unmonitored and mismanaged assets offer, despite the fact that orphaned services are widely acknowledged as a major Azure cost management issue that must be controlled. These expensive orphans are essentially deadly zombies from a management perspective.

 Therefore, de-allocating or deleting a resource when you no longer use it is crucial to avoid paying for resources you aren’t utilizing. This can be done through the Azure portal, Azure CLI, or Resource Manager templates. Deleting a resource completely removes it from your subscription, so be sure that you really don’t need it before taking this step.

 If you don’t, even though you aren’t using the resource, your Azure cloud spending will keep rising.

3- Sizing Workloads Inappropriately

 Sizing workloads inappropriately is a common mistake made by organizations when transitioning to Azure. It’s important to right-size your workloads so that you’re not paying for more compute power than you need. Right-sizing your workloads can help reduce your Azure cloud spend. There are a few ways to do this:

• Review your existing on-premises workloads and determine which ones can be moved to the cloud. Not all workloads are suitable for cloud migration.
• Once you’ve identified which workloads can be moved, determine how much compute power they need in order to run effectively in Azure. 
• Pay close attention to your Azure bills and monitor your usage closely. If you notice that you’re constantly exceeding your compute limits, it’s time to scale up your VM sizes or add more VMs to your deployment.

 By keeping an eye on your computer usage and making sure that you’re not paying for more resources than you need, you can help yourself reduce your Azure cost.

4- Not Applying Azure Hybrid Benefits

If you have on-premises licenses for Windows Server and SQL Server with active Software Assurance, you can apply the Azure Hybrid Benefit to save up to 40% on those licenses when running them in Azure VMs. This benefit can help reduce your overall Azure cloud spend.

Below is a preview of what contributes to the cost of creating a Windows virtual machine in Azure and how much money the Azure HUB can save you.

• Hourly compute costs: You spend an hourly fee for computation, whether creating a VM through the Azure interface or using PowerShell (V-cores, RAM, hard drive space, etc.)
• Microsoft licensing: You must additionally purchase a license fee to operate a Windows virtual machine in Azure. You can host a VM in the cloud using Azure HUB by using the license for your on-premises VMs.

5- Not Reserving Instances

You can save money by reserving virtual machines (VMs) for one or three years. Reservations give you a discount of up to 72% compared to pay-as-you-go prices for VMs. This discount is applied to the total cost of the VM, including storage and networking charges. So if you have VMs that you know will be running continuously, reservation discounts can help reduce your overall Azure cloud spend. 

Conclusion 

Azure is a great platform for organizations looking to move to the cloud. Cloud migration can be a daunting task, but with careful planning, it doesn’t have to break the bank. The best way to keep your Azure spending in check and avoid any nasty surprises is to set up governance controls and processes for managing cloud resources. By doing this, you can ensure that all resource deployments are compliant with your organization’s standards and within budget.

Establishing Azure governance can be a little complicated, which is why our experts are here to assist you in managing all your Azure cloud costs with ease. So, if you’re looking for ways to cut Azure spending, request a demo on our website to find out how much you can save.

We are all aware that Azure offers enterprises the versatility and mobility needed to expand their operations and IT architecture on the cloud. However, it becomes exceedingly challenging and laborious to monitor every commodity in fluid Azure systems as the development and utilization of resources rise.

In the worst situation, your engineers and IT administrators can be setting up and managing additional resources without your knowledge until their associated expenditures jarringly appear in your monthly invoices.

To prevent such bill shocks, it’s critical to develop a sound tagging strategy throughout your cloud and apply Azure tagging best practices for effective resource and expense administration.

What is Azure Tagging?

Name-value combinations known as MS Azure tags are used to thematically categorize assets, specify additional metadata as a feature of the item, and give users a clearer picture of a particular cloud subscription. Tags may be assigned to specific Azure Resource Manager-created components or, more commonly, to the entire resource group to which they belong. The tagging is carried out at the Azure system level; therefore, it has no effect whatsoever on the connected resources’ efficiency. The function is also free.

The name-value combinations that make up the metadata can include anything that aids in identifying the category to which a given commodity is expected to belong. 

For instance, the value of a resource tag key may be “Engineering,” and the key could be “Department.” Although they can be changed at any moment, it’s preferable to use uniform tags when creating resources to prevent ambiguity and extra work connected with their efficiency. In this manner, you will be capable of quickly identifying all of the assets that fall under specific units, financial pools, operational environments, etc., by sorting your assets in the Azure portal with tags. 

Common Tags 

IT managers must organize cloud-based resources to ensure all implementations are straightforward. You can tag in a fundamental or comprehensive way by employing various azure tagging strategies. It can assist IT teams in managing cloud operations or integrating data relevant to every facet of the company. Following that, here is a list of tags that businesses frequently employ.

• Environment
• Owner 
• Cost Center
• BusinessUnit
• Department
• Client
• Application
• DataClassification
• Workload
• Management

The Benefits of Tagging in Azure 

The benefits of tagging your Azure costs are that you can more easily track and control your spending, which is one of the reasons why it’s a key part of FinOps (Financial Operations). When you have a clear understanding of where your money is being spent, you can make more informed decisions about how to allocate your resources. Azure Tagging can also help you optimize your Azure spending by identifying areas where you may be able to reduce or eliminate unnecessary costs. The benefits of azure tagging resources include the following:

• Resource management: Your IT staff would be able to easily find resources that are connected to particular processes, settings, control units, or other crucial data. Classifying organizational roles and privileged access for management systems depends on the organization of the resources.
• Cost management and optimization: Empower IT to comprehend the assets and applications that each team utilizes in order to make business groups conscious of the usage of cloud services.
• Operations management: A key component of ongoing operations for the operations executive team is transparency on business obligations and SLAs. Operations can be managed for mission severity using tags.

Conclusion 

Tagging your Azure expenses can improve your understanding of your expenditures and allow you to utilize your assets more wisely. Tagging is an excellent place to start if you’re seeking strategies to optimize your Azure spending. By using clear metadata tagging rules, you can arrange your cloud resources to satisfy legislative, strategic efficiency, and financial constraints. This makes it easier to find and utilize resources.

Request a demo on our website to find out more about managing Azure resources to cap your cloud spending effectively.

It’s more crucial than ever for businesses to manage their expenditures as the economy teeters on the edge of another recession. Azure infrastructure is one of the primary line items on any organization’s budget. Estimating or planning cloud costs is crucial when your business moves toward an architecture, framework, or software-as-a-service ecosystem. Furthermore, you want to avoid experiencing “bill shock”—a sudden spike in your budget for Azure cost management —later. In other words, as you deal with additional staff or cloud resource vendors, budgetary control becomes more necessary and sophisticated in the “cloud age.”

Here are some prevalent reasons for efficiently working toward Azure cost management in 2023.

Inflation is Rising

One of the main drivers of increased Azure expenses is inflation. The cost of living is rising, and Azure service costs are following suit. If you’re not diligent, your Azure bill can spiral out of control very quickly. Reserving cloud resources while they’re affordable is one strategy to address this. When a price increase is imminent, reserving cloud space for the upcoming few years seems like the best course of action. This way, you’ll know exactly how much your Azure services will cost each month, and you won’t have to worry about inflation eating into your budget. 

Bloat is Rampant

 Another reason why controlling your Azure spending is so important is because bloat is rampant in most organizations. What do we mean by bloat? Bloat refers to unused or unnecessary resources that are taking up space and costing money. For example, you may have an unused VM that’s still consuming computing resources and costing you money every month. Or you may have an over-provisioned database that’s using more storage than it needs to. Whatever the case may be, it’s important to find and eliminate any sources of bloat in your Azure infrastructure as one of the Azure cost management best practices. 

Savings Compound

Gaining knowledge of who in your organization is in charge of what expenses, also referred to as establishing transparency in your cloud costs, can be beneficial in many situations. Knowing your budget allows you to choose the right Azure cost management tools and set budgets for each business segment, commodity, service, or function.

If you’re able to reduce your Azure spending even by a small amount, those savings will compound over time and can eventually be reallocated to other projects. For example, if you’re able to save $5000 per month on your Azure cost management documentation/bill, that’s $60,000 per year that you can put towards other initiatives. And if you’re able to maintain those savings for multiple years, the impact on your bottom line can be significant. 

Funds Can Be Appropriated to Other Projects

 Finally, controlling your Azure spending can free up funds that can be appropriated to other projects. In many cases, IT departments are forced to choose between different initiatives because they lack the funding to support them all. But if you’re able to get your Azure spending under control, you may find that you have some extra cash in the budget that can be used to fund other initiatives. 

You can also gain insights into expenditure patterns and constraints over time by generating transparency and interpreting data. It’s crucial to fundamentally manage the expenses against your spending plan and impress the finance department as well. 

Conclusion 

Businesses must exercise greater financial restraint as the economy hovers on the verge of another downturn. Azure infrastructure is typically one of the highest-spending products for any organization. We looked at various techniques to reduce costs and keep your Azure expenditure in check, including reserving cloud resources, removing instances of bloat, and distributing funds to other initiatives. You can ensure your company survives the next economic slump without going bankrupt by following these tips. 

Azure cost management vs. Azure Advisor? Wondering which one would be ideal for assisting you in establishing your business’ Azure budget? Here at Metrix Data 360, our experts can assist you with all your Azure-related concerns. Request a demo or visit our website to find out more about what works best for your company.