We are excited to announce the availability of Azure savings plan recommendations & portfolio in Cloudability. Savings plans are a commitment-based discounting instrument provided by Azure that reduce the hourly rates paid in return for committing to usage for 1 or 3-year terms. This update complements our existing detailed reporting and cost amortization and will further help customers make informed commitment decisions. This starts with the purchase recommendations which give you the flexibility to choose your preferred term length, scope, and lookback period. Surfacing the total available savings and savings rate helps stakeholders decide what level of commitment to make and allows them to easily compare with the alternative savings that are available via reserved instances (RIs have a higher discount rate).

Figure 1: Azure Savings Plans Recommendations

(Note: there will only be one recommendation for savings plans as all usage is rolled up across regions)

With Azure Savings Plans now available in the Cloudability Portfolio you have one place to get complete visibility across all purchased plans. This surfaces important aggregated information such as your total committed dollar figure as well as detailed information for each purchased plan.

Figure 2: Azure Savings Plans Portfolio

Updates to Navigation

With this launch we’ve also made some navigation changes to make the insights easier to locate within Cloudability. Savings Plan recommendations can now be found under Optimize -> Reserved Instance Planner (for AWS this was previously under Insights -> Savings Plans). The Savings Plans section (under insights) has been renamed “Savings Plan Portfolio” under which you can now find a tab for Azure.

Make sure your vendor credentials are up to date!

Before you can take advantage of these Azure savings plan insights, you’ll need to make sure your Azure credentials are up to date. For Azure MCA customers you’ll need to make sure the “Billing Account Reader” permission is assigned to the “CloudabilityUtilizationDataCollector” service principal whereas for EA customers you’ll need the “Enrollment Reader” assigned. For full instructions on permissioning please check out specific user documentation for MCA and EA Azure customers. By adding these credentials you’ll also ensure Azure SQL Database reserved instance recommendations are surfaced.