Reducing Costs with Copilot in Microsoft Cost Management

Optimize Your Cloud Spend with AI-Powered Insights

As more and more of your business becomes vested in the cloud, you face the ongoing challenge of optimizing those cloud investments to minimize costs while driving. Microsoft Cost Management is a tool that provides critical insights into your workloads and spending within the Azure Portal subscription. It’s designed to help you achieve better financial governance through enhanced visibility, accountability, and ongoing cost optimization. It’s an invaluably innovative tool we recommend to all our Azure clients. And it just got a whole lot smarter thanks to the addition of Copilot for Azure. Here’s more about Microsoft Cost Management and Copilot and how they work together.

What is Microsoft Cost Management?

Microsoft Cost Management is a comprehensive suite of financial operations (FinOps) tools designed to help your organization effectively analyze, monitor, and control its spending on Microsoft Cloud services. It is accessible through various management interfaces and offers users—from single accounts to large teams—the ability to report on, analyze, and optimize costs directly within the Azure portal, Microsoft 365 admin center, or Power BI.

“We are the Copilot company. We believe in a future where there will be a Copilot for everyone and everything you do.”Satya Nadella – CEO, Microsoft

What is Microsoft Copilot

Recently, Microsoft took a significant leap forward by integrating generative AI (in the form of Copilot) into Microsoft Cost Management. This cutting-edge feature (currently in preview) allows you to interact with the tool using natural language. You don’t need to be an expert in data analysis or navigation through complex UIs. Using Copilot, you can quickly gain insights and actionable recommendations to better manage and forecast your cloud expenses.

What is Copilot in Microsoft Cost Management

How Does Copilot in Microsoft Cost Management Work?

You can now ask Copilot to break down your costs by category, compare your spending month-over-month, and receive immediate responses. This allows you to investigate cost fluctuations across different subscriptions, providing AI-generated insights into any charge increases.

As you engage with the AI assistant, it analyzes your data and suggests ways to optimize your spending. For example, you can set up budgets, create alerts for potential overages, and add anomaly alerts for unexpected cost changes. These tools help you make informed decisions and prioritize investments that maximize your return on investment.

Under the hood, Copilot combines your queries with secure data retrieval and complex analytics to deliver tailored responses. Microsoft ensures that your data is used solely to facilitate your current session, maintaining privacy and security.

Key Features of Copilot in Microsoft Cost Management

Key features of Copilot in Microsoft Cost Management include proactive cost monitoring through budgets, alerts for anomalies and reservation utilization, and the capacity to manage shared costs with cost allocation rules.

Here are some key points to note:

Natural Language Processing: Microsoft Copilot for Azure allows users to ask questions in natural language to get insights and recommendations about cloud costs. This makes the tool accessible and user-friendly for various users, regardless of their technical background.
Contextual Analysis: The tool can pull context from the last scope accessed using Cost Management to provide relevant answers. If the context is unclear, it prompts the user to specify the scope or provide more context, ensuring the responses are as accurate and helpful as possible.
Cost Summarization: Users can ask Copilot to summarize costs for a specified period, like the last six months, and it will provide a consolidated view of the expenses.
Cost Analysis: Copilot can analyze specific cost spikes, such as inquiring about an unusual cost increase on a particular date, which can help identify and address inefficiencies.
Cost Estimation and Forecasting: The tool can estimate expected expenses, which aids in budgeting and financial planning for future cloud expenditures.
Resource Analysis: It can identify which resource groups are incurring the highest costs, allowing for targeted cost management efforts.
Cost Reduction Strategies: When asked how to reduce costs, Copilot can provide a list of recommendations, including an estimate of potential savings, helping users make informed decisions about cost optimization.
Savings Plan Coverage: Copilot for Microsoft Cost Management can identify which resources are covered by savings plans, which is essential for maximizing the benefits of such plans.
Up and Coming Functionality: Looking ahead, Velosio is excited about an upcoming what-if modeling feature Microsoft has hinted at. You’ll be able to ask hypothetical questions about your cloud costs and receive forecasts and suggestions for optimizing spending in those scenarios.

Ready to Get Started with Copilot in Microsoft Cost Management?

With the new Copilot in Microsoft Cost Management capabilities, your organization can more easily manage costs and gain insights that enable smart reinvestment and support your business growth. Velosio is here to guide you through this, helping you fully capitalize on the benefits of AI-driven cost optimization. How can Copilot affect your company’s workflow and goals? Contact us to learn the benefits of Copilot and how it can impact your company’s workflow for the better.