What Happens During an Azure Cost Assessment

You’ve decided to get your Azure costs under control. The first step is an assessment — but what does that actually involve? Here’s exactly what to expect.

Before We Start

We’ll need read-only access to your Azure environment. Specifically:

  • Cost Management Reader role at the subscription or management group level
  • Reader role for resource inventory analysis

No write access. No changes to your environment. We look, we don’t touch.

What We Analyze

Spending Patterns

We examine 3-6 months of billing data to understand your baseline. Where is the money going? Which subscriptions, resource groups, and services drive the most cost? Are there seasonal patterns or unexpected spikes?

Resource Utilization

We identify resources that are over-provisioned or sitting idle:

  • VMs running at 5% CPU
  • Storage accounts with no recent access
  • App Service plans with unused capacity
  • Databases sized for peak loads that never come

Commitment Coverage

Reserved Instances and Savings Plans can cut compute costs by 30-70% — but only if they match your actual usage. We analyze your current coverage and identify gaps where commitments would pay off.

Architecture Efficiency

Some cost issues are structural. We look for:

  • Resources in expensive regions that could move
  • Premium tiers where standard would suffice
  • Redundant services that duplicate functionality
  • Dev/test workloads running on production pricing

Tagging and Attribution

Can you answer “how much does Project X cost?” If not, we identify the tagging gaps that make cost allocation impossible.

What You’ll Receive

Executive Summary

A one-page overview of your Azure cost health: current spend, identified savings, and top priorities. Written for finance leaders, not engineers.

Detailed Findings Report

Every optimization opportunity we identify, categorized by:

  • Quick wins — changes you can make this week
  • Medium-term — require planning but deliver significant savings
  • Strategic — architectural changes for long-term efficiency

Each finding includes estimated savings, implementation complexity, and specific resources affected.

Prioritized Roadmap

Not everything needs to happen at once. We sequence recommendations based on effort vs. impact, so you know where to start.

How Long It Takes

  • Access setup: 15 minutes of your time
  • Analysis: 2-3 business days on our end
  • Findings call: 30-45 minutes to walk through results

From first contact to actionable recommendations: typically one week.

What Happens Next

The assessment gives you a clear picture of where you stand and where you can improve. From there, you can:

  • Implement recommendations yourself using our report
  • Engage us for ongoing optimization and monitoring
  • Do nothing (though we hope you won’t)

No pressure, no hard sell. The assessment stands on its own as a useful deliverable.

Ready to see where your Azure spend is going? Book an assessment.