Top 6 Cloud Cost Management Tools You’ll Need to Thrive in 2024

Cloud cost management is crucial for companies using cloud-native technologies such as microservices, containers, and Kubernetes. It involves monitoring, measuring, and controlling cloud costs to maximize investment in public cloud services. Traditionally, cloud cost management has focused on waste reduction efforts like eliminating underutilized or forgotten resources and optimizing purchasing decisions. However, as companies adopt next-generation cloud services, the focus shifts towards architectural optimization. Managing cloud costs brings several benefits, including accurate forecasting, planning, and budgeting of cloud spend; greater cost visibility for engineers to see the impact of their work on the budget; discovering areas that could use rearchitecting for increased profitability; making informed decisions about adjusting pricing structures and decommissioning resources; benefiting from load balancing, autoscaling, capacity reservation, volume discounts, saving programs, and spot instances; and identifying the best services to use for each application. To build a cloud cost management strategy, companies can include points such as providing a uniform and succinct labeling approach that everyone can use, instructions for setting up monitoring and alerting tools, and creating a method for evaluating and optimizing costs on an ongoing basis. Some top cloud cost management tools for 2024 include CAST AI, Spot by NetApp, Harness, Apptio Cloudability, CloudCheckr, Kubecost, and Zesty. These tools offer value to teams looking to optimize their cloud bills and streamline cloud cost monitoring and reporting processes. However, only solutions that go beyond cost monitoring and reporting and offer automated cloud cost optimization can make a real difference in reducing costs.