Cloud cost creep is real. Here are seven changes I make on almost every FinOps engagement that typically reduce Azure spend by 20–40% — with no impact on performance.
Azure makes it wonderfully easy to spin up resources — and just as easy to forget about them. On nearly every cost-optimisation engagement I run, the bill can be reduced by 20–40% without touching performance. Here are the seven highest-impact moves.
1. Hunt down orphaned resources
Unattached managed disks, idle public IPs, old snapshots and forgotten test environments quietly accrue charges. A single sweep through Azure Advisor and a tag-based audit usually finds the first easy win.
2. Right-size before you reserve
Most VMs are over-provisioned. Use Azure Monitor metrics over a representative period, then drop to the smallest SKU that comfortably handles your peak. Right-sizing first means you don't lock in reservations for capacity you never needed.
3. Buy reservations & savings plans for steady workloads
For anything that runs predictably 24/7 — domain controllers, databases, always-on app servers — one- or three-year reservations and savings plans cut compute costs by up to 65% versus pay-as-you-go.
4. Schedule non-production environments
Dev, test and staging rarely need to run nights and weekends. An automation runbook that shuts them down outside business hours can cut their cost by two-thirds.
5. Tier your storage
Move infrequently accessed blobs to Cool or Archive tiers with lifecycle management policies. Backups and logs are prime candidates and the savings compound over time.
6. Set budgets and anomaly alerts
Optimisation isn't a one-off. Budgets with alerts and cost anomaly detection mean you're notified the moment something starts trending the wrong way — before it becomes next month's nasty surprise.
7. Tag everything
You can't manage what you can't attribute. Enforce a tagging policy (environment, owner, cost-centre) so spend is transparent and accountable by team or project.
The goal of FinOps isn't to spend less — it's to spend deliberately. Visibility almost always pays for itself.
Want a quick read on where your Azure spend is leaking? I offer a fixed-scope FinOps audit that quantifies the savings before you commit to anything. Get in touch and we'll take a look.
Emmanuel A.
Azure Administrator & Cloud Consultant at EA IT Consult. Helping businesses run secure, cost-efficient Azure & Microsoft 365.
