Azure Cost Management + Billing updates – May 2020

Whether you're a new student, thriving startup, or the largest enterprise, you have financial constraints and you need to know what you're spending, where, and how to plan for the future. Nobody wants a surprise when it comes to the bill, and this is where Azure Cost Management + Billing comes in.

We're always looking for ways to learn more about your challenges and how Azure Cost Management + Billing can help you better understand where you're accruing costs in the cloud, identify and prevent bad spending patterns, and optimize costs to empower you to do more with less. Here are a few of the latest improvements and updates based on your feedback:

• Billing improvements for Microsoft Customer Agreement billing accounts.
• What's new in Cost Management Labs. 
• New ways to save money with Azure.
• New videos and learning opportunities.
• Documentation updates.

Let's dig into the details.

 

Billing improvements for Microsoft Customer Agreement billing accounts

Microsoft Customer Agreement accounts introduce several key benefits over Enterprise Agreement and Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) accounts. This month brings several key improvements to make it even easier to manage and pay for your account:

• Group subscriptions into separate invoices using billing profiles.
• View credits, refunds, and tax information on the new invoice details page.
• Turn on auto-renewal for recurring charges.
• Customize your billing account name.

These are all based on your feedback, so please keep it coming. Our goal is to make it easier than ever to manage and pay your invoices. What would you like to see next?

 

What's new in Cost Management Labs

With Cost Management Labs, you get a sneak peek at what's coming in Azure Cost Management and can engage directly with us to share feedback and help us better understand how you use the service, so we can deliver more tuned and optimized experiences. Here are a few features you can see in Cost Management Labs:

• NEW: Show billing menu items on the Cost Management menu.
  See all Cost Management + Billing menu items together in one place with quick navigation between scopes.

Of course, that's not all. Every change in Azure Cost Management is available in Cost Management Labs a week before it's in the full Azure portal. We're eager to hear your thoughts and understand what you'd like to see next. What are you waiting for? Try Cost Management Labs today.

 

New ways to save money with Azure

We're always looking for ways to help you optimize costs. Here's what's new this month:

• Save on storage costs with ephemeral OS disks – new Azure Advisor recommendation.
• CSP partners: Enable your customers to buy their own Azure reservations.

 

New videos and learning opportunities

For those visual learners out there, there are five new videos and a new MS Learn module you should take a look at:

• How to reduce cost with Azure virtual machines (14 minutes).
• How to approach cost savings and billing APIs for Azure resources (13 minutes).
• Calculating reservation chargeback (2 minutes).
• Tracking reservation utilization (2 minutes).
• Drive higher utilization of Azure HDInsight clusters with Autoscale (13 minutes).
• MS Learn: Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework – Cost optimization module (51 minutes).

Follow the Azure Cost Management + Billing YouTube channel to stay in the loop with new videos as they're released and let us know what you'd like to see next.

Want a more guided experience? Start with Control Azure spending and manage bills with Azure Cost Management + Billing.

 

Documentation updates

Here are a couple documentation updates you might be interested in:

• Added TooManyRequests error code to key-based Billing API docs.
• Documented the new recommendation for creating an Ephemeral OS Disk.

Want to keep an eye on all of the documentation updates? Check out the Cost Management + Billing doc change history in the azure-docs repository on GitHub. If you see something missing, select Edit at the top of the document and submit a quick pull request.

 

What's next?

These are just a few of the big updates from last month. Don't forget to check out the previous Azure Cost Management + Billing updates. We're always listening and making constant improvements based on your feedback, so please keep the feedback coming.

Follow @AzureCostMgmt on Twitter and subscribe to the YouTube channel for updates, tips, and tricks. And, as always, share your ideas and vote up others in the Cost Management feedback forum.

We know these are trying times for everyone. Best wishes from the Azure Cost Management team. Stay safe and stay healthy!

Source: Azure Blog Feed