Learn to manage investments and cost efficiency of Azure and AI workloads

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As your business and workloads grow, cloud costs can increase. That’s why it’s vital to learn to manage investments and cost efficiency in every step of your Azure workloads, empowering your team with the right skills to manage cloud spending. With self-paced learning in our new Plan on Microsoft Learn titled Manage Azure and AI investments for Cost Efficiency, you’ll be guided through learning milestones to help you build financial best practices into your AI and cloud computing management process and build a culture of cost efficiency.

In this blog, we’ll share what you’ll learn in the modules of this Microsoft Learn Plan and show you how to put learning into action with Azure tools that help you combine pricing offers, create a customized cost efficiency plan, and monitor your costs.

Azure savings plans help The Carlsberg Group

Many industry leaders are already taking advantage of savings plans to help them design and manage cost-optimized workloads across their whole organizations. Take the Carlsberg Group, who built cost efficiency into their migration process resulting in significant savings.

With a presence in 150 markets, multinational brewer The Carlsberg Group required a cloud migration process with zero downtime to avoid any production slowdown. By taking advantage of Azure pricing offerings, not only did they save between 40-65% on compute services, but they also built a culture of cost efficiency using FinOps principles and Azure cost management tools.

Build a cost efficiency culture with FinOps  

Learning FinOps best practices gives your organization autonomy over your financial health, allowing you to manage and optimize your cloud spend. FinOps best practices spread cost efficiency responsibilities across your entire organization and requires skilling to be effective.

“The solution supports financial awareness,” said Sonal Gupta, Senior Manager of FinOps and Hosting Service Delivery at The Carlsberg Group. “Everyone feels accountable for their cloud spend and avoids additional costs. We can budget and forecast, investing in just what we need, without cost spikes.”

With the FinOps focused modules in our Plan on Microsoft Learn, Manage Azure and AI investments, you’ll explore how to get started with FinOps and then apply your learning to adopt FinOps principles on Azure. With an interactive guide in the Microsoft Learn modules, you’ll see how to manage cost and usage in the Azure Portal.

Learn about opportunities to save

Beyond FinOps best practices, Azure offers a variety of cost-saving options, from Azure Reservations to Azure Savings Plan for Compute to Azure OpenAI Service Provisioned Reservation, that allow you to optimize your cloud budget based on your workload needs, and Azure Hybrid Benefit, that builds savings into your migration process. Let’s look at each offering and see how to best match them to your business needs.

Azure Reserved Instances

Azure Reserved Instances are a great way to lock in a price and save for your compute workloads that are stable and have specific requirements like VM type or region. The Carlsberg Group, for example, optimizes Azure costs through a strategic mix of three-year Reserved Instances for stable workloads, one-year Reserved Instances for moderately flexible needs, and three-year Savings Plans for dynamic or seasonal requirements.

Learn more with the “Save money with Azure Reserved Instances” module, with guidance on:

• How to use Azure Advisor and the Cost Management app to identify use patterns and get purchase recommendation.
• View and manage your reservations on Azure
• Create and analyze reports

Azure Savings Plan for Compute

For customers that want to save on their workloads but need flexibility across their compute resources or regions, Azure savings plan for compute is a great way to optimize spend. Learn more about Azure savings plan for compute with the “Purchase Azure savings plan for compute” module, which will guide you through:

• Determining if Azure Savings plan for compute matches your business needs
• Preparing for and purchasing Azure savings plan for compute
• Managing and monitoring Azure savings plan for compute

Azure Hybrid Benefit

Azure Hybrid Benefit is an Azure offer that allows organizations to maximize savings in their migration journey by giving a discount on server licenses and subscriptions and granting outsourcing and hybrid capabilities. The skilling module provides you with step-by-step guidance on how to use AHB, including:

• Identifying if you are eligible for AHB and understanding how it can benefit you
• Understand how to apply and manage AHB
• Combine AHB with other savings programs to get the best price

Azure OpenAI Service Provisioned Reservations

For Azure OpenAI Service customers, provisioned reservations are an opportunity for additional savings. Customers can save up to 70%* compared to pay-as-you-go with Azure OpenAI Service provisioned reservations. You can learn how to use PTU reservations with the “optimize spend and performance with Azure OpenAI Service provisioned reservations” module. It is designed to help you:

• Chose when to use a provisioned model
• Decide how many PTUs to reserve
• Manage and deploy your reservations

Monitor costs with Microsoft Cost Management

Cost information is an important factor for any cloud decision and Microsoft Azure has tools to help you pick the best offerings for your organization and continually monitor and optimize them. Learn how to make informed budget decisions with cost management training on:

Cost management on Azure:

• Use the pricing calculator to estimate the cost of your workloads on Azure.
• Learn the functions of Microsoft Cost Management like monitoring your budget and sending you alerts when you are close to exceeding it and visualizing your Azure spending.
• Use resource tags to organize your cloud resource and manage costs.

Introduction to analyzing costs and creating budgets with Microsoft Cost Management:

• Apply cost management principles using Microsoft Cost Management.
• Learn how to use cost analysis to find trends in your cloud spending.
• Build a budget and create alerts to help you manage your expenses.

Get started

Whether you’ve just started your migration journey or want to reduce your cloud costs, Azure has cost savings offerings and trainings. Manage Azure and AI investments Learn Plan walks you through building a FinOps culture, selecting and combining Azure strategic pricing offerings, and using Microsoft Cost Management to monitor and manage your budget.

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* The 70% savings is based on the GPT-4o Global provisioned throughput hourly rate of approximately $1/hour, compared to the reduced rate of a 1-year reservation at approximately $0.3028/hour. Azure pricing as of January 1, 2025 (prices subject to change. Actual savings may vary depending on the specific Large Language Model and region availability.)

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