Caellix Contact Us FINOPS & COST OPTIMIZATION
Know what Azure costs, who owns each part of it, and where to cut — before the invoice makes those decisions for you.
YOUR CHALLENGES
The problem rarely starts with reckless spending. It starts with reasonable decisions made without cost context, environments that were never revisited, and commercial pricing that defaults to the highest rate unless someone actively manages it — with no structure in place to surface any of it before the bill does.
New products get approved without a cost estimate for running them. Finance finds out what it cost when the bill arrives.
Cloud spend lands three months after the decision, on page two of the invoice. Finance and engineering work from different numbers — or no number at all — so growth investments get approved without anyone knowing what they cost to run.
Projects end. Charges don't. Unreviewed Azure estates carry 20–35% in recoverable spend, month after month.
Cloud waste doesn't come from one bad decision — it builds quietly through projects that ended, capacity sized for peaks that never arrived, and environments nobody cancelled. Each item looks small. Together, they represent money that could have funded a hire, a product feature, or a market push.
Cloud budgets get approved in January and forgotten by March. A competitor who built spend controls a year ago is already ahead — and still pulling away.
With no spend governance, nobody is notified until a limit is already crossed. Ownership is unclear, so overspend isn't caught until end-of-month reconciliation — long after the money is gone.
The cloud evolves every year. Most Azure environments don't. Every month without a review is another month the cost gap widens.
The longer an environment goes unreviewed, the wider the gap between what it costs and what it should. Old sizing, old pricing, and old architecture keep billing at yesterday's rates — and every month without a review widens the gap.
Azure charges the full on-demand rate unless someone actively manages it. Most businesses don't — and the difference is paid in every invoice.
Workloads that run every month qualify for a lower rate — in some cases far below pay-as-you-go — but nobody claims it. The full on-demand rate keeps applying, and the difference is paid again in every invoice for as long as the workload runs.
Headcount changes. Role changes. Licences don't. Most organisations pay for tiers and seats that active users stopped needing months or years ago.
Licences are assigned once and renewed on autopilot. Nobody compares what's assigned against what's actually used, so the organisation keeps paying for premium tiers and seats that active users stopped needing months or years ago.
WHAT WE OFFER
Each discipline addresses a different source of unnecessary cost — visibility gaps, budget blind spots, waste that accumulates unnoticed, pricing that defaults to the highest rate, and licence spend that doesn't reflect actual use. None of them works in isolation. Together, they give finance and engineering a complete picture and the controls to act on it.
Every Azure cost traced to the team, project, or environment that generated it. Finance gets a breakdown they can use — not a lump sum that needs reconstructing after the invoice arrives.
Unused environments, orphaned resources, and oversized capacity identified and cleared. Each item removed is a recurring charge gone from the next invoice.
Budgets defined per team and project, with alerts that notify the right person before a limit is crossed. End-of-month reconciliation stops being the first signal that something went wrong.
Services that run every month qualify for a significantly lower rate than on-demand pricing. Identifying them and securing that rate is a finite piece of work — the saving runs automatically from the month it's applied.
Most organisations pay for more M365 licences than they use — and at a higher tier than most users need. A structured review identifies the gap and captures the saving without affecting what anyone can access.
A defined ownership model, regular review cadence, and clear escalation paths keep spend governed without making it a full-time job. The savings don't erode back to baseline because the structure that produced them stays in place.
The net result
Six disciplines, applied together. When the engagement ends, every cost has an owner, every budget has an alert, and the structure in place keeps the savings running — without ongoing external support.
Every Azure cost traced to a named owner — no unattributed spend left to guess at end of month
Unused resources removed and oversized capacity corrected — and prevented from accumulating again
Budgets set per team and project, with alerts that flag a problem while there's still time to act
Services that qualify for a lower rate covered — saving runs automatically from the month it's applied
Microsoft 365 licences matched to actual usage — not what was assigned when the contract was signed
A review cadence and ownership model that keep the result from quietly reverting to baseline
Visibility Measure spend
Billing data, budgets, exports, and cost analysis become the shared baseline for finance and engineering.
Optimization Discover waste
Rightsizing, reservation, reliability, and operational recommendations are reviewed against business context before action.
Visibility Query estate
Resource inventory is searchable across subscriptions, so unowned and orphaned assets stop hiding in the estate.
Governance Govern spend
Tagging, allowed SKUs, regions, and guardrails are enforced before spend becomes difficult to explain.
Reporting Monitor drift
Usage signals and alerts show when spend changes because workloads changed, not because invoices surprised the team.
Reporting Report outcomes
Finance-ready reporting turns billing exports and ownership data into views leadership can use every month.
Governance Control access
Cost ownership is tied to accountable people and groups, not left as anonymous subscription-level spend.
Automation Automate fixes
Approved corrections become repeatable infrastructure changes, so the same waste does not return in the next sprint.
SUCCESS STORY
A mid-size professional services firm — 280 users, Azure estate running for 3 years, no FinOps structure in place.
| Before | After with Caellix | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost visibility | ~12% attributed | 100% attributed |
| Time to detect overspend | 30+ days | < 48 hours |
| Monthly cloud waste | 28% of bill | < 5% |
| M365 licence utilisation | ~58% | 92% |
8-week Azure FinOps value path
A focused Azure FinOps engagement starts with immediate savings evidence, then moves quickly into bill reduction, optimization waves, and a payback point the business can measure.
to first saving identified
visible by week two
after six weeks of optimization
to recover engagement cost
GreenOps
Right-sizing, scheduling, and cleaner placement decisions cut cost and reduce cloud emissions at the same time. Azure Carbon Optimization can add the emissions view, so FinOps work also supports CO2e reduction, carbon-neutrality targets, and EU sustainability reporting expectations.
HOW WE WORK
Assessment, governance setup, and optimisation in one engagement. Each phase ends with something finance and engineering can act on immediately.
Map before we touch
Current Azure estate mapped, billing analysed, ownership gaps surfaced. Nothing is optimised before we understand what's running.
Govern before we optimise
Tagging policy, cost allocation model, and budget governance set up. Finance and engineering see the same numbers — before the next invoice lands.
Savings applied by impact
Waste cleared, reservations applied, M365 licences reviewed. Each item costed before it's actioned — no changes without a calculated saving.
Structure that holds
Operating model, review cadence, and ownership assignment handed over. The savings don't erode because the structure that produced them stays in place.
Engagement model
WHAT YOU CAN COUNT ON
FAQ
Both options are available, and they can be scoped from the start or decided once findings are in. The assessment identifies, sizes, and prioritises every savings opportunity with a calculated figure for each. Implementation support is a separate layer: once you have approved which changes to make, we execute them directly in your Azure environment — covering cleanup, right-sizing, commitment coverage, tagging, alerting, and reporting.
Advisor shows isolated, resource-level suggestions with no business context. It does not know which workloads matter, who owns what, which commitments fit your plans, or how Microsoft 365 licensing maps to actual use. We turn raw signals into decisions someone is accountable for — sized, prioritised, approved, and implemented. That gap is where the money actually is.
Two engagement options are available. Assessment only: a fixed-fee engagement covering estate analysis, ownership gaps, savings identification, and prioritised recommendations — scope and price agreed before work starts. Assessment with implementation: the fixed assessment fee applies, and implementation work is priced as a share of the savings it produces. The implementation fee is tied to the agreed savings measurement, not a flat rate for effort.
We start with billing, usage, and estate visibility. Read-only access is enough for assessment work. Any write access or change execution is scoped separately and only used for approved actions.
Savings depend on what is running in your Azure environment — the mix of resource types, how they are sized relative to actual demand, what commitment pricing is or is not in place, and how Microsoft 365 licences are assigned versus used. We assess each area against your own billing and usage data and calculate each opportunity before recommending it. The figure that matters is the one from your estate, not an industry average.
Then you find out quickly and cheaply — the first read on billing and usage data shows within weeks whether material savings exist. Unreviewed estates rarely come back clean, but if yours does, you get something almost as valuable: evidence the spend is justified, and the controls to keep it that way.
Assessment, tagging, budgeting, reporting, and alerting are non-disruptive. Changes that affect running workloads, such as right-sizing or decommissioning, are costed, reviewed, and approved before anything is changed.
Usually one finance contact and one infrastructure or DevOps contact are enough. Finance confirms budget structure and ownership; engineering confirms what is running and why. A dedicated project team is not required.
We specialise in Azure and Microsoft 365. That focus is deliberate: recommendations are specific to Azure billing, reservations, savings plans, policy, identity, monitoring, and Microsoft licensing rather than generic multi-cloud advice.
The handover includes the ownership model, review cadence, savings tracking, documented changes, and escalation process. The goal is for your team to keep the controls running without depending on ongoing external support.
NEXT STEPS
Start with a clear view of where Azure spend goes, who owns it, and which changes will reduce waste without slowing delivery.