Cost Optimisation Pillar

The Cost Optimisation pillar focuses on avoiding unnecessary costs, understanding where money is being spent, selecting the most appropriate and right number of resource types, analysing spend over time, and scaling to meet business needs without overspending.

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Design Principles

The Cost Optimisation pillar is guided by five design principles:

1. Implement Cloud Financial Management

Invest in building the capability to manage costs in the cloud. This includes people, processes, and tools dedicated to understanding and optimising cloud spend. Treat cost management as a first-class operational concern, not an afterthought.

2. Adopt a Consumption Model

Pay only for the computing resources you consume and increase or decrease usage depending on business requirements. Unlike traditional infrastructure, you do not need to invest in data centres and servers before you know how you will use them.

3. Measure Overall Efficiency

Measure the business output of your workload and the costs associated with delivering it. Use this data to understand the gains you make from increasing output and reducing costs. This goes beyond simple cost tracking — it ties spending to business value.

4. Stop Spending Money on Undifferentiated Heavy Lifting