Exploring Cloud Cost Management

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring Cloud Cost Management

    Cloud Cost Management enables ServiceNow customers to analyze and manage the full spectrum of costs associated with their cloud assets. This capability helps organizations identify opportunities to reduce expenses and optimize cloud operations through continuous monitoring and cost analysis of cloud infrastructure.

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    Cloud Cost Management Workflow

    The workflow involves ongoing monitoring of cloud infrastructure to track costs and usage. This continuous analysis empowers users to make informed decisions about resource allocation, cost savings, and operational efficiency improvements.

    Key Features and Benefits

    • Cloud Cost Management Workspace: Provides an intuitive interface offering complete visibility into cloud spending and usage, benefiting executives, FinOps teams, cloud managers, and administrators.
    • Rightsizing Resources: Automatically recommends adjustments to cloud resource sizes to better align with actual usage, helping cloud administrators and application owners reduce costs.
    • Reservation or Saving Plans: Supports cost reduction by converting on-demand payment plans to reservation or savings plans, managed by cloud administrators and application owners.
    • Unused Resources Identification: Detects high spend areas and stranded assets, enabling cost optimization by cloud administrators and application owners.
    • Business Hours Automation: Identifies and automatically powers off cloud resources outside of normal working hours, further reducing costs for administrators and application owners.
    • Cloud Budgets: Allows allocation and tracking of cloud budgets, assisting FinOps practitioners and cloud administrators in financial governance.
    • Change Management Integration: Automates approval workflows by integrating cloud optimization actions into existing change management processes, streamlining operations for FinOps teams and cloud administrators.

    Learn more about Cloud Cost Management with a sample workflow and reviewing the benefits that it can provide for different users in your organization.

    Cloud Cost Management overview

    Cloud Cost Management helps you analyze the full range of costs related with cloud assets so you can identify and act on chances to save money and optimize operations.

    Cloud Cost Management workflow

    Cloud Cost Management continuously monitors your cloud infrastructure to analyze costs so you can identify and act on resources to save money and optimize operations.

    Figure 1. Monitor your cloud infrastructure
    Monitoring the cloud infrastructure to analyze costs of your cloud assets.

    Cloud Cost Management benefits

    Benefit Feature Users
    Optimize cloud costs and usage by gaining complete visibility of your cloud spend and usage through an intuitive and streamlined user interface. Cloud Cost Management Workspace Executives/FinOps Practitioners/Cloud Managers/Cloud Administrators
    Rightsize cloud resources by getting automated recommendations on how to reduce cloud costs by correctly dimensioning cloud resources to match usage. Rightsizing resources Cloud Administrators/Application owners
    Decrease costs by the conversion of on-demand payment plans to reservation plans for your cloud resources. Reservation or Saving plans Cloud Administrators/Application owners
    Identify cost optimizations targets by analyzing areas of high spend and stranded cloud assets. Unused resources Cloud Administrators/Application owners
    Turn off resources when not in use by identifying cloud resources that aren’t used outside normal working hours and automatically turn them off and on. Business hours Cloud Administrators/Application owners
    Allocate budgets Cloud budgets FinOps Practitioners/Cloud Administrators
    Automate optimization approvals by integrating cloud optimization tasks into your existing change management processes. Change Management FinOps Practitioners/Cloud Administrators