Cloud cost management tools help companies control their cloud services-related spending by monitoring a company’s resource usage and computing demands. These solutions are typically paired with an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) software offering to minimize the costs of their pay-as-you-go model. Cloud cost management software helps companies reduce waste by alerting users of lowered demand or automatically scaling usage to optimal rates. Companies also use these platforms to increase the efficiency of their cloud service usage; cloud cost management solutions often provide reporting features to outline waste and redundancies. Cloud cost management tools have some overlap with SaaS spend management software, but the latter is used to monitor and manage spending on cloud applications rather than cloud infrastructure.
To qualify for inclusion in the Cloud Cost Management category, a product must:
Monitor cloud infrastructure usage
Track spending as it relates to resource usage
Identify areas to save by reducing resource usage