SERVICE SCOPE
What’s in scope.
01
Cost and ownership baseline
Review subscriptions, resource owners, tags and allocation coverage. Establish how the organisation handles budgets, forecasts, anomalies and the evidence used for recurring cost decisions.
02
Consumption and commitments
Investigate idle, orphaned or oversized resources and recurring usage patterns. Test reservation and licensing assumptions against demand before considering a commitment that could constrain later architecture choices.
03
Architecture and run state
Review cost alongside performance, availability, backup, retention and transfer requirements. Identify service ownership, decision rights and managed-operation options rather than treating right-sizing as the only decision.
A prioritised cloud improvement plan.
The review connects financial and technical findings so each action has an owner and a reason.
✓
Cost and ownership baseline with allocation gaps.
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Prioritised actions by evidence, risk, effort and business impact.
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Commitment decision inputs and architecture tradeoffs.
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A monthly operating scorecard and improvement cadence.
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Managed-operation scope options where the findings support them.
When this review fits.
Use it when spend, performance or operational responsibility is unclear in an existing Azure environment. It can expose architecture or governance work that needs a separate technical assessment.
01
Investigate the decisions behind a changing bill
A rising bill can reflect growth, idle resources, changed architecture or services whose owner is unclear. Begin by separating those causes. The review should connect expenditure to a workload and business purpose so a proposed reduction can be assessed against the service it supports.
Microsoft’s cost-optimisation guidance treats cost as a tradeoff with other architectural requirements. A cheaper resource may alter performance, resilience or recovery. Braintree’s review should therefore present opportunities with their demand assumptions, dependencies and risks, rather than treating a smaller forecast bill as sufficient evidence of improvement.
02
Prepare usage, ownership and commitment evidence
Bring cost exports across a representative operating period, resource ownership, tags, budgets, utilisation and current commitments. Include expected demand changes, planned retirements and requirements that explain apparently spare capacity. Finance and workload owners should agree which costs are attributable, shared or temporarily duplicated.
For each proposed action, record the change, owner, implementation dependency and validation measure. Consumption estimates, existing licence benefits and commitment options need current eligibility and commercial confirmation. The customer should approve service-impacting tradeoffs and future demand assumptions. The review produces a decision backlog; rightsizing, architectural changes or transfer to managed operations should have an explicit delivery scope.
03
Decisions the assessment should make visible
Decision
Evidence to examine
What to agree
Usage reduction
Demand pattern, idle periods and service criticality.
What can change safely and how the service will be validated.
Commitment choice
Stable demand, future workload plans and applicable terms.
Whether the risk of commitment is justified by the evidence.
Cost accountability
Resource ownership, allocation gaps and shared services.
Who reviews spend and who approves the next corrective action.
BEFORE YOU DECIDE
Practical questions.
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Does the review promise a saving?
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Is right-sizing enough?
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Can it lead to managed operations?
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How much billing history should we provide?
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Should we buy commitments before the review?
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Can idle capacity be required for resilience?
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How do we know a recommendation worked?
BUILD YOUR BUSINESS CASE
Explain the bill in terms of the work it supports.
The problem to solve.
A rising Azure bill can reflect growth, unused resources, architecture choices or licensing. Treating all of it as waste leads to the wrong recommendation.
What success should look like.
Build a prioritised improvement case that connects each cost decision to performance, service obligations and an owner.
Bring these into the discussion.
A useful starting point for your team and the people approving the investment.
Useful reading for your proposal.
Evidence, examples and questions to take into the decision.
Insight
22 January 2024
Cloud economics
Frame cloud cost as an operating decision
Prepare the questions behind a sustainable cost review.
Read the insight
Insight
20 August 2026
Cost drivers
Examine the relationship between cores and licensing
Use a specific infrastructure example to test whether a cost change fits the workload.
Read the insight
Insight
20 August 2026
Renewal planning
Include contract dates in the options
Understand why the commercial calendar can change the migration decision.
Read the insight
LET’S GROW.
Work through the next step with Braintree.
Bring the bill and the workload context. We will help identify which changes deserve investigation first.
