Whether you're a new student, a thriving startup, or the largest enterprise, you have financial constraints, and you need to know what you're spending, where, and how to plan for the future. Nobody wants a surprise when it comes to the bill, and this is where Microsoft Cost Management comes in.

We're always looking for ways to learn more about your challenges and how Microsoft Cost Management can help you better understand where you're accruing costs in the cloud, identify and prevent bad spending patterns, and optimize costs to empower you to do more with less. Here are a few of the latest improvements and updates based on your feedback:

• Monitor your budgets from the Azure mobile app.
• Cost savings insights in the cost analysis preview.
• We want to learn about your cloud commerce experience.
• What's new in Cost Management Labs.
• New licensing benefits make bringing workloads and licenses to partners’ clouds easier.
• New ways to save money with Microsoft Cloud.
• Documentation updates.
• Join the Microsoft Cost Management team.

Let's dig into the details.

Monitor your budgets from the Azure mobile app

In June, we shared the addition of your current cost to the Azure mobile app. This was great because it gave you direct access to your costs whenever you need it, wherever you are. The experience has now been expanded and you can now track your budgets on the go.

To view your budgets, simply open any subscription or resource group and select the Cost Management tile. You’ll see a new screen with your current cost, forecast, last month’s cost, and any budgets you’ve created.

What would you like to see next?

Cost savings insights in the cost analysis preview

Cost optimization is arguably the number one goal for organizations using Cost Management. When I talk to people about how to drive cost efficiency, I always start with Azure Advisor. Advisor recommendations are the quickest way to address some of the most common inefficiencies. Unfortunately, many still don’t know about Azure Advisor or forget to check in to see if there are any new recommendations. In an effort to help you drive the most efficient solutions, the cost analysis preview now includes a summary of your subscription cost recommendations.

We hope this helps you drive cost efficiency across your resources. You can find this today on subscriptions and we’re working on expanding that to resource groups as well.

Learn more about Cost savings insights or check it out yourself in the cost analysis preview. Let us know what you’d like to see next!

We want to learn about your cloud commerce experience

Are you responsible for managing Microsoft 365 and Azure cloud costs? We’d love to learn more about your experience and business process when it comes to your cloud costs. If interested in connecting with us for a 60-minute interview, please reach out to [email protected].

What's new in Cost Management Labs

With Cost Management Labs, you get a sneak peek at what's coming in Microsoft Cost Management and can engage directly with us to share feedback and help us better understand how you use the service, so we can deliver more tuned and optimized experiences. Here are a few features you can see in Cost Management Labs:

• Updated: Cost savings insights in the cost analysis preview—Now available in the public portal. 
  Identify potential savings available from Azure Advisor cost recommendations for your Azure subscription. You can opt in using Try preview.
• Updated: Product column experiment in the cost analysis preview—Now available in the public portal.
  We’re testing new columns in the Resources and Services views in the cost analysis preview for Microsoft Customer Agreement. You may see a single Product column instead of the Service, Tier, and Meter columns. Please leave feedback to let us know which you prefer. 
• Forecast in the cost analysis preview.
  Show your forecast cost for the period at the top of the cost analysis preview. You can opt in using Try preview.
• Group related resources in the cost analysis preview.
  Group related resources, like disks under VMs or web apps under App Service plans, by adding a “cm-resource-parent” tag to the child resources with a value of the parent resource ID.
• Charts in the cost analysis preview.
  View your daily or monthly cost over time in the cost analysis preview. You can opt in using Try Preview.
• View cost for your resources.
  The cost for your resources is one click away from the resource overview in the preview portal. Just click View cost to quickly jump to the cost of that resource.
• Change scope from the menu.
  Change scope from the menu for quicker navigation. You can opt-in using Try Preview.

Of course, that's not all. Every change in Microsoft Cost Management is available in Cost Management Labs a week before it's in the full Azure portal or Microsoft 365 admin center. We're eager to hear your thoughts and understand what you'd like to see next. What are you waiting for? Try Cost Management Labs today.

New licensing benefits make bringing workloads and licenses to partners’ clouds easier

On October 1, 2022, Microsoft will implement significant upgrades to our outsourcing and hosting terms that will benefit customers worldwide. Added benefits will enable new scenarios for how customers can license and run workloads with cloud providers, including partners in the Cloud Solution Provider program. These changes will support customers’ ability to move their licenses to a partners’ cloud, leverage shared hardware, and have more flexibility in deployment options for their software licenses. With these changes, customers have additional choices to deploy their solutions with more flexibility. See Microsoft Licensing News for further details on what we’re doing to give customers more flexibility and choice. You can also see how we’re working with partners to make hosted cloud easier for customers, whether they bring their licenses or get them from a partner. Partners can learn more at the Microsoft Partner blog.

New ways to save money in the Microsoft Cloud

Check out these seven generally available updates that can help you save money:

• Reserved capacity for Azure Backup Storage.
• Azure Virtual Machines with Ampere Altra Arm–based processors.
• Up to 45 percent performance gains in stream processing.
• Azure Dedicated Host support for Azure Kubernetes Service.
• Microsoft Azure available from new cloud region in Qatar.
• Azure Arc–enabled servers in South Africa North and China East 2 and China North 2.
• Azure VMware Solution now in Sweden Central.

Documentation updates

Here are a few documentation updates you might be interested in:

• New: Customize views in cost analysis.
• New: Optimize costs for Azure Backup Storage with reserved capacity.
• Updated: Added new option for How to buy Marketplace software reservations.
• Plus 12 updates based on your feedback.

Want to keep an eye on all documentation updates? Check out the Cost Management and Billing documentation change history in the azure-docs repository on GitHub. If you see something missing, select Edit at the top of the document and submit a quick pull request. You can also submit a GitHub issue. We welcome and appreciate all contributions!

Join the Microsoft Cost Management team

Are you excited about helping customers and partners better manage and optimize costs? We're looking for passionate, dedicated, and exceptional people to help build best in class cloud platforms and experiences to enable exactly that. If you have experience with big data infrastructure, reliable and scalable APIs, or rich and engaging user experiences, you'll find no better challenge than serving every Microsoft customer and partner in one of the most critical areas for driving cloud success.

Watch the video below to learn more about the Microsoft Cost Management team:

Join our team.

What's next?

These are just a few of the big updates from last month. Don't forget to check out the previous Microsoft Cost Management updates. We're always listening and making constant improvements based on your feedback, so please keep the feedback coming.

Follow @MSCostMgmt on Twitter and subscribe to the YouTube channel for updates, tips, and tricks. You can also share ideas and vote up others in the Cost Management feedback forum and help shape the future of Microsoft Cost Management.

We know these are trying times for everyone. Best wishes from the Microsoft Cost Management team. Stay safe and stay healthy.