Azure Cost Management is a set of tools and services provided by Microsoft Azure to help organizations manage and optimize their cloud spending. It enables businesses to monitor, analyze, and control their Azure costs effectively, ensuring that they get the most value from their cloud investments while staying within budget. Here are key aspects and features of Azure Cost Management:

1. Cost Visibility:

   • Azure Cost Management provides detailed insights into your Azure spending, allowing you to see where your cloud resources are consuming costs.
   • It offers a comprehensive view of usage and costs across subscriptions, resource groups, and individual resources.

2. Cost Analysis:

   • You can perform cost analysis to understand how different services, regions, and resource types contribute to your overall Azure spending.
   • Cost analysis helps identify cost optimization opportunities by visualizing trends and patterns in your cloud expenses.

3. Budgets and Alerts:

   • Azure Cost Management allows you to set budget thresholds and configure alerts to proactively monitor spending against your budget.
   • You can receive notifications when your spending exceeds predefined limits, helping you take timely actions to control costs.

4. Recommendations:

   • The service provides cost-saving recommendations based on your usage patterns and historical data.
   • Recommendations may include resizing or deprovisioning underutilized resources, switching to reserved instances, and more.

5. Cost Allocation and Chargebacks:

   • Azure Cost Management supports cost allocation and chargeback scenarios, making it easy to allocate costs to different departments, teams, or projects.
   • You can create custom cost allocation rules and reports to facilitate internal chargebacks.

6. Integration with Azure Policy:

   • Azure Policy can be used in conjunction with Azure Cost Management to enforce cost management policies and compliance requirements.

7. Resource Tags:

   • You can use resource tags to label Azure resources for tracking and cost allocation purposes.
   • Tags allow you to categorize resources and report on spending by different attributes.

8. Enterprise Agreement (EA) Integration:

   • Azure Cost Management integrates with Azure Enterprise Agreements to provide advanced cost management capabilities for large enterprises.

9. Multi-Cloud Support:

   • Azure Cost Management also supports cost management for other cloud providers, allowing organizations to track spending across multiple clouds in a single view.

10. Custom Reporting:

    • You can create custom reports and dashboards in Azure Cost Management to gain deeper insights into your cloud spending.

11. Cost History and Forecasting:

    • The service provides historical cost data and forecasts to help you plan for future expenses and budget effectively.

12. API and Export Options:

    • Azure Cost Management offers APIs and export options to integrate cost data with other tools and systems for further analysis and automation.