Optimizing Azure Cloud Spend: Practical + AI-Driven Strategies

Presentation Goals

• Educate attendees on cloud cost challenges and best practices.
• Showcase how AI enhances traditional cost management strategies in Azure.

The Foundation - General Cloud Cost Management Strategy

• Understand What You Use (Tagging, Resource Grouping, Monitoring, Dashboard, Reporting)
• Use the Right Pricing Models (Pay-as-you-go, Reserved Instances, Spot VMs, Azure Hybrid Use Benefits)
• Eliminate Waste (Orphaned resources, idle VMs, zombie disks, storage lifecycle & tiering)
• Governance & Budgets (Azure Policy, Management Groups, Budget Alerts, Cost Allocation)
• Serverless Compute Model (Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Functions, Containerized Microservices, App Services, Azure Storage)

AI-Powered Azure Cost Management Strategy

• Azure Cost Management + AI Recommendations
• Cost anomalies detection such as sudden spike in resource utilization
• Cost and Budget Forecasting
• Utilize Copilot in natural language to get cost details and recommendations

Our speaker tonight is long-time Community member Sal Bawany, a Solution Architect at Long View Systems. Sal is based in Houston and will be presenting in person!

Food and soft drinks will be served at ~5:30pm on the 10th floor - we will kick off the discussion there @6pm after everyone has had a chance to eat, meet anyone else you'd like to and have a chat :-). Feel free to start arriving from 5pm on if you are nearby. PLEASE RSVP so we have an accurate food count.

PARKING: For free parking please park across the street on the third and fourth floors of the parking garage at 12711 Queensbury; parking in the Microsoft building is not free

In-person: 750 Town and Country Blvd #1000 · Houston, TX
Livestream: Link
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/@HoustonAzureUserGroup