Azure Cost Optimization Consulting
Reservation and Savings Plan modeling, Hybrid Benefit recovery, App Service rightsizing, Log Analytics retention tuning, and Enterprise Agreement / MCA-E commercial optimization - delivered as a fixed-fee assessment.
Microsoft ISV Program member · Fintropy includes ~159 Azure-specific rules
Program member
Microsoft Marketplace
~159 Azure-specific
and Amit Jethva
Serving India + English-speaking markets
Azure waste patterns we find
Every Azure cost optimization assessment we run uncovers spend leaking through the same nine seams. Named, scoped, recoverable.
Reserved Capacity gaps
Unused or under-utilized 1-year and 3-year Reservations - wrong region, wrong VM family, or scope set too narrowly to absorb actual usage.
Hybrid Benefit unclaimed
Existing Windows Server and SQL Server licenses with active Software Assurance - never applied to the Azure VMs and SQL workloads that could use them. Often the single largest finding.
Oversized App Service Plans
P2v3 / P3v3 plans sized for peak that never arrived, plus dev/test plans left at production tier after launch.
Log Analytics retention drift
Default retention is 31 days, but workspaces routinely get held at 730 - paying premium for cold data that should be archived or dropped.
Unused Public IPs
Standard SKU Public IPs billed per hour, sitting unattached after the VM or load balancer they served got deleted.
Oversized SQL DB DTU tier
Databases provisioned at S3 or higher when actual DTU consumption sits below 20% - or stuck on DTU when vCore would be cheaper for the workload shape.
Recovery Services Vault snapshots
Unused snapshots and orphaned backup items in Recovery Services Vaults - retention policies that nobody owns and nobody reviews.
ExpressRoute under-utilization
Premium-tier circuits provisioned at 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps but running at single-digit percent throughput - circuit consolidation or downgrade unclaimed.
Idle Application Gateway / Load Balancers
Standard Application Gateway v2 instances and Standard Load Balancers attached to deleted backends, still accruing hourly charges.
Tools we use
First-party Azure tooling for evidence, Fintropy for breadth and FOCUS-normalized analysis across the rest of your estate.
Microsoft Cost Management + Billing
Source of truth for billed cost, scopes, and budgets.
Azure Advisor
First-party rightsizing and reservation signal - useful baseline, narrow coverage.
Azure Migrate
For estates with on-prem to Azure flow, especially Hybrid Benefit modeling.
Cost Anomaly Detection
Microsoft Cost Anomaly Detection wired into your existing alert channel.
Fintropy
Our own platform - 497 scan rules total, including roughly 159 Azure-specific rules covering reservation strategy, Hybrid Benefit, anomaly governance, and architecture-aware waste detection.
Commitment math - Reservations, Savings Plans, Spot, Hybrid Benefit
Azure gives you four commitment instruments. They are not interchangeable. We model the right mix against your actual consumption shape.
Azure Reservations
1-year or 3-year, scoped by region and VM family (or shared scope across subscriptions). Deepest discount, lowest flexibility. Best for steady production baseline.
Savings Plans for Compute
Hourly $/hr commit, flexes across regions and VM families. Lower discount than Reservations, higher flexibility. Best for growth headroom and workloads still finding their shape.
Reserved Capacity (data)
Reserved Capacity extends beyond compute - SQL Database, Cosmos DB, Azure Cache for Redis, and Synapse all support 1-year and 3-year reservations on the data tier.
Spot VMs
Deep discount against pay-as-you-go in exchange for an eviction model. Best for batch jobs, CI pipelines, dev/test, and stateless workloads with retry built in.
Azure Hybrid Benefit math
Existing Windows Server and SQL Server licenses with active Software Assurance can be applied to Azure VMs to remove the Windows or SQL surcharge from the hourly compute rate. The standard headline number is up to ~40% off Windows VM cost. On SQL VMs the dollar impact is usually dramatically larger because the licensing itself is dramatically more expensive.
The work is half technical, half commercial: catalog every active SA-covered license you hold, map them to current Azure consumption, and apply the benefit at deployment or via portal toggle. Hybrid Benefit also extends to RHEL and SLES on Azure with the equivalent Linux subscription model.
Enterprise Agreement / MCA-E optimization
Commercial structure is half of Azure cost. The other half just runs on top of it.
EA tier negotiation
Enterprise Agreement renewal positioning - tier alignment, prepay structure, and forecasted consumption commitment used as the negotiation lever.
MCA-E migration timing
Microsoft Customer Agreement for Enterprise is the modern replacement for EA. We time the cutover to minimize commitment exposure, preserve price protection, and avoid double-paying through the transition window.
MCPP Partner of Record
Microsoft Cloud Partner Program - Partner of Record placement, Partner Admin Link (PAL), and any incentive flow that affects how spend is recognized against your account team's quota.
Azure Consumption Commitment
MACC (Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment) is a multi-year spend commitment that unlocks deeper price terms. We model your real consumption curve against the commitment to make sure the dollar shape matches the discount shape.
Sample finding categories
Categories - not stories. We do not publish anonymized case studies with invented numbers. These are the kinds of findings we recover in a typical Azure assessment.
License entitlement recovery
Mapping existing Windows Server / SQL Server licenses with active Software Assurance to Azure VM and SQL workloads where Hybrid Benefit has never been applied.
Reservation portfolio rebalance
Reservations bought for an outdated VM family or wrong region - exchange or scope adjustment unlocks discount that was being paid for but not used.
Log Analytics retention right-scoping
Per-table retention policies, cold-tier archival to Storage, commitment-tier pricing for predictable volume, and verbose-log diet to drop high-cardinality noise.
Idle infrastructure cleanup
Unattached Public IPs, orphaned disks, idle Application Gateways, abandoned Recovery Services Vault items - recurring hourly charges removed in week one.
Engagement model
Three phases. Fixed-fee. Read-only access to billing and identity.
Discovery
Read-only access to Cost Management, Reservations, Advisor, and your EA / MCA-E portal. Fintropy scan against the full Azure estate.
Findings & roadmap
Working session with finance, platform, and your Microsoft account team. Findings reviewed line by line. Commitment scenarios modeled against three plausible consumption curves.
Prioritization & rollout
90-day rollout plan. Named owners. Sequencing that respects renewal windows, commitment exposure, and change-control. Optional ongoing retainer for execution support.
Engagement pricing
Indicative ranges. Final scope and price agreed per engagement before kickoff. INR-priced for India-headquartered clients.
Azure Cost Diagnostic
10 business days. Fast scan of the top cost drivers and recoverable quick wins.
$8K – $15K fixed
Azure Cost Optimization Assessment
3 weeks. Full Fintropy scan, commitment modeling, Hybrid Benefit mapping, EA/MCA-E review, 90-day roadmap.
$15K – $40K fixed
Ongoing Azure FinOps retainer
Execution support, monthly reporting, anomaly response, quarterly commitment rebalance.
From $5K / month
Common questions
What does Azure FinOps cost optimization consulting cover?+
Reservations and Savings Plans modeling, Hybrid Benefit recovery, App Service Plan rightsizing, Log Analytics retention and ingestion tuning, Microsoft Cost Anomaly Detection setup, tagging and allocation governance, and a chargeback or showback model. All tied to the FinOps Foundation framework - Inform, Optimize, Operate.
How much can I save on Azure with Hybrid Benefit?+
Up to roughly 40% on Windows VMs if you already hold Software Assurance on Windows Server licenses and apply them correctly. SQL VM workloads typically see dramatically larger absolute savings because SQL Server core licensing is expensive on a pay-as-you-go basis. Most enterprises with an on-prem Microsoft estate leave 30-60% of their Hybrid Benefit entitlement unclaimed simply because nobody mapped existing licenses to current Azure consumption.
Azure Reservations vs Savings Plans - which should I buy?+
Reservations give a deeper discount but lock you to a region and VM family. Azure Savings Plans for Compute give a lower discount in exchange for flexibility across regions and VM families. Mature shops mix both: Reservations for the steady baseline that will not move, Savings Plans for growth headroom and workloads still finding their shape. Reserved Capacity also extends to SQL Database and Cosmos DB.
Can you help us migrate from EA to MCA-E?+
Yes. We model the spend impact of the cutover, work alongside your Microsoft account team, and time the transition to minimize commitment exposure and price-protection gaps. We also review Microsoft Customer Agreement for Enterprise (MCA-E) tier negotiation, MCPP partner of record placement, and any Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) obligations that should be reset.
Why is our Azure Log Analytics bill so high?+
Default ingestion-based pricing combined with retention drift is the usual culprit. Common fixes: scope retention per table instead of a workspace-wide 730-day default, archive cold data to cheaper Storage tiers, move predictable ingestion volume onto commitment tiers, drop high-cardinality verbose logs, and split chatty workloads onto their own workspace so they cannot pollute the main bill.
How does this compare to using Azure Advisor's recommendations directly?+
Azure Advisor surfaces roughly 30% of the savings opportunities and only on the resources it can see. The other 70% lives in reservation strategy, license entitlements such as Hybrid Benefit, anomaly response, governance, EA/MCA-E commercial structure, and the architectural choices Advisor does not analyze. Advisor is useful but it is not a substitute for a FinOps practice.
See also
Different cloud, broader scope, or platform context.
Multi-cloud cost optimization
Azure plus AWS plus GCP plus Kubernetes plus VMware - one practice, one FOCUS-normalized billing view.
AWS cost optimization consulting
RI / SP modeling, EDP renegotiation, Graviton migration, Trusted Advisor depth.
GCP cost optimization consulting
CUDs, BigQuery slot reservations, GKE cost discipline, committed-use modeling.
FinOps consulting
Building the long-term FinOps practice - operating model, governance, enablement.
Book a 30-minute Azure cost review
3-week assessment. Fixed-fee. Read-only access. We bring Fintropy and the Reservations / Hybrid Benefit math.
Schedule a Call