Optimizing costs
Cloud solutions can be built with incredible flexibility around the resources they consume. We can create systems that dynamically respond to usage so that they scale automatically as needed. Serverless options also allow for solutions that cost near zero when not being used. By way of an example, services such as Azure functions are billed per execution – if there's no execution, there is no cost.
This flexibility, however, leads to a problem with cost management – how do you define how much a service will cost? In a traditional on-premises architecture, projects will normally be costed based on the hardware and software licenses that need to be purchased. Whether the system is used a little or a lot, the costs will be the same.
Business leaders will often want to know how much a service will cost to run so that they can decide whether it is worth the expenditure. However, how can we state what a solution will cost until we can see how much it...
