Our monthly cloud bill across Azure and AWS has jumped 40% in the last quarter without a corresponding increase in user growth. We suspect a lot of "cloud waste" from unattached EBS volumes, idle RDS instances, and over-provisioned VMs. How are enterprise companies tracking costs across multiple vendors effectively without spending all day in spreadsheets?
3 answers
Managing multi-cloud waste requires a cultural shift toward FinOps. First, implement strict tagging policies; if a resource isn't tagged with an owner and a project code, it gets terminated automatically. Tools like CloudHealth or Kubecost can provide a unified view, but you can start for free by using AWS Cost Explorer and Azure Cost Management. I’ve seen companies save 20% just by scheduling non-production environments to shut down during weekends and off-hours. Also, look into "Sustained Use Discounts" and "Spot Instances" for non-critical workloads.
Have you considered using an open-source tool like CloudCustodian to automate these "cleanup" policies across both AWS and Azure through a single YAML-based rule engine?
Reserved Instances (RIs) are the biggest win. If you know you'll be running a database for a year, committing upfront can slash your bill by nearly 50%.
Barbara is right. Even for multi-cloud, the commitment models (RIs for AWS or Savings Plans for Azure) are the most straightforward way to see immediate price drops.
Thomas, CloudCustodian is excellent for this. It allows you to write a policy once—like "delete unattached volumes after 7 days"—and apply it to multiple cloud providers. It removes the human element of forgetting to clean up after a dev cycle. Just make sure you run it in "dry-run" mode first so you don't accidentally kill a production database that was temporarily detached for maintenance!