Custom Widgets: Optimize your cloud spendings as personal as you are

Posted on December 1, 2019 by de

Cloud Costs offers more and more capabilities and allows you to generate reports to cover all requirements in your organization when it comes to multi-cloud spend management and optimization.

Cloud Costs is happy to introduce a brand new feature called Custom Widgets for all kinds of dashboards, including the CSP portal. The new capability is available in all regions for all paid plans starting from the StartUp Edition. Custom Widgets allows every user to put every report or every other resource on the surface of his or her personal dashboard to get instant access to critical performance indicators.

Getting started with the new capability can be done within 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Enable the Dashboard Edit Mode
Visit the Dashboard Edit Mode by clicking on the small pen in the upper right corner of the cloud costs dashboard.

Step 2: Select Widget-Type and add details
Select the required widget type and enter the details. Currently, an iFrame widget and a report center-based widget are available.

Step 3: Re-Arrange as needed
Re-Arrange the location of the different widgets that it looks as good as possible for yours. The defined dashboard layout is stored on the cloud and can be re-used on every other device automatically.

The new custom widget feature supports the Report Center fully and allows to bring all reports from the Report Center directly on the dashboard surface

Interested in the new feature?
Try the new feature today by simply logging into your Cloud Costs account. The feature is part of any paid plan. Getting started with Cloud Costs is very easy, just visit our Cloud Costs portal.

Any questions, wishes, or ideas? Try our feedback portal or drop an mail to help@azure-costs.com.

Boost your N-Tier Business Model with Cloud Costs Reseller Management

Posted on May 22, 2019 by de

Microsoft launched the Cloud Solution Provider Program with two different partner models. A Direct Cloud Solution Partner (CSP) deals directly with Microsoft and sells the resources from Microsoft to his customers. The direct CSP has the requirement to process all the purchases through his e-commerce portal against the Microsoft Partner Center. Creating new customers or registering new subscriptions is part of the direct CSPs role.

Compared to the direct model the Indirect Cloud Solution Provider is a company working together with a direct CSP to purchase Cloud resources. Microsoft delegated the billing process and the transparency requirement to the Direct CSP. Cloud Cost can help a lot in simplifying this process by offering a management portal for Direct CSPs, Indirect CSPs and Customers of CSPs.

Cloud Costs is happy to announce the Reseller Management functionality. Resellers can be managed and used for all kind of contracts independent from the Microsoft CSP program, so Cloud Costs is the single solution on the market which extends the CSP business model to EA, AWS and GCP contracts as well. This new feature can also be used to delegate the management of a part of a contract to a subsidiary, daughter company or external service provider.

Just activate your first reseller by visiting the Reseller Management Portal in Cloud Costs:

Last but not least assign multiple customers to the newly created reseller in the CSP portal:

A simple and easy jump start into your N-Tier Business Model to become a more powerful Cloud Solution Provider.

Interested in the new feature?
Getting started with Cloud Costs for CSPs is very easy, just visit our portal for Cloud Solution providers and enroll in the CSP program as described here. To become part of the CSP support an existing trial account or an enterprise plan is required.

Any questions, wishes or ideas? Try our feedback portal or drop a mail to help@azure-costs.com.

Managing multiple CSP, EA and AWS accounts made easy – Service Provider Portal

Posted on May 15, 2019 by de

Being a successful Multi-Cloud Solution Provider means often ending up with a contract sprawl by supporting Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform in different regions for different currencies. At least Microsoft enforces cloud solution providers to sign up for one contract per currency. Consolidation and M&A activities could also become a reason for ending up with multiple CSP contracts in different currencies.

The Cloud Costs CSP portal allows every Cloud Solution Provider to track, manage and optimize spendings including offering customer spending portals for the required transparency the majority of customers need. The new Service Provider Portal offers another visualization and an aggregated view on all CSP, EA and AWS contracts at the same time.

The new consolidated view through all contracts allows you to align different contract currencies to the standard currency of your company. These make it easier to compare markets to each other, never miss an emerging market.

Interested in the new feature?
Getting started with Cloud Costs for CSPs is very easy, visit our portal for Cloud Solution providers and enroll in the CSP program as described here. To become part of the CSP support an existing trial account or an enterprise plan is required.

Any questions, wishes or ideas? Try our feedback portal or drop a mail to help@azure-costs.com.

VARs handle Managed Services on Azure and Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform at ease

Posted on May 10, 2019 by de

Cloud Solution Providers often deliver important and market-relevant solutions based on Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform to their customers. These solutions are often related to a consumption-based or tier-based pricing related to the consumed resources in the cloud services. Customers expect transparency and real-time information regarding cloud spending aggregated in a holistic solution including the value-added services provided by a Cloud Solution Provider.

Cloud Costs is happy to introduce the Virtual Service Meters functionality which is available in all regions right now. Virtual Service Meters allows managing the billing and pricing aspects of managed services delivered from Cloud Solution Providers.

The powerful and easy to use JavaScript-based logic engine allows modeling any kind of managed service. Combining Virtual Service Meters and Cloud Costs powerful REST API enables every Cloud Solution Provider to prepare a robust, transparent and consistent billing chain for cloud-based services.

Looking for more technical information? Feel free to visit our development sandbox for Virtual Service Meters with comprehensive technical documentation to integrate new meters right away.

> Open Development Sandbox <

Interested in the new feature?
Try the new feature today by simply logging into your Cloud Costs account as Cloud Solution Provider. The feature is part of any paid cloud solution provider plan.

Getting started with Cloud Costs for CSPs is very easy, just visit our portal for Cloud Solution providers and enroll in the CSP program as described above. To become part of the CSP support an existing trial account or an enterprise plan is required.

Any questions, wishes or ideas? Try our feedback portal or drop a mail to help@azure-costs.com.

Act like a CSP/MSP with your Enterprise Agreement (EA)

Posted on August 8, 2018 by de

Today we’re very excited to announce the availability of our Enterprise Agreement support for the Azure Costs Cloud Solutions Providers platform.

Several months ago, Microsoft introduced the Cloud Solution Provider program . This program enables companies from the technical and the business perspective, to resell Azure resources or complex solutions on top of the Azure cloud.

Azure Costs supports the Cloud Solutions Provider program since day one and has a lot of experience in processing Enterprise Agreements. Therefore we’re very happy to now release our Enterprise Agreement support for the Azure Costs CSP platform. This update brings together both business models, Enterprise Agreements and CSP Partners. Azure Costs allows you to use Enterprise Agreements in the same way as CSP accounts.

This new option supports your migration from an Enterprise Agreements based Managed Service Provider to a real Cloud Solution Provider. Just combine all the different costs in a single and holistic portal. In addition, there are some important features dedicated to Enterprise Agreement customers only:

Define customers based on every property of your choice:
As the Enterprise Agreement does not support customers out of the box, Azure Costs adds this functionality and gives every EA contract holder the same features as you have in the CSP ecosystem.

Define Cloud Solution Provider Margins:
This allows every CSP to differentiate between the pricing Microsoft offers to the EA and the price the CSP offers for the customer. Just define the different pricing tier per customer individually.

Generate Cloud Solution Provider Filters:
This allows to hide services which are not charged for the customer. Only services targeted by the CSP filter will appear in the customer portal.

Offer a customer spending portal besides a reseller spending Portal:
This allows your customers to manage the spendings by their own. This portal gives your customers 100% the same features incl. team management as if they would sign up to Azure Costs with an enterprise edition directly and an EA contract.

Interested in the new feature?
Getting started with Azure Costs for CSPs is very easy, just visit our new portal just for Cloud Solution providers and enroll into the CSP program as described above. To become part of the CSP support an existing trial account or an enterprise plan is required.

Any questions, wishes or ideas? Try our feedback portal or drop a mail to help@azure-costs.com.

Revised Spending Analytics Engine for Cloud Solution Providers

Posted on October 16, 2017 by de

Today we’re very excited to announce the availability of the revised spending analytics engine for cloud solution providers. All of the enhancements focus on more accuracy and productivity, when working with your customers on a daily basis.

Since Azure Costs is supporting direct cloud solution providers also called CSP Tier 1, we work together with many different CSPs around the globe. The analytics engine in Azure Costs is one of the most important components and ensures that the spending data is aggregated well and all processes like up-scale a resource are outlined and calculated correctly.

As a service in Microsoft Azure consists of many parts we’ve decided to focus on the development of the analytics engine to understand the different meters correctly. This gives us the possibility to invest more in predictions and recommendations based on machine learning and artificial intelligence. Especially complex situations like an out-scale event can now be visualised very easily.

The new engine will be rolled out to all customers within several waves and after an opt-in phase it will become our standard engine. For now every CSP needs to switch directly in the data view generated with the new engine by selecting the action shown above. In addition the spending dashboard of every single customer can be moved to the new engine manually as show bellow:

This prevents that we disturb customers of a cloud solutions provider by accident.

Interested in the new feature?
Getting started with Azure Costs for CSPs is very easy, just visit our portal just for Cloud Solution providers and enroll into the CSP program as described above. To become part of the public preview of the CSP support an existing enterprise plan is required.

Any questions, wishes or ideas? Try our feedback portal or drop a mail to help@azure-costs.com.

Cost Management for CSPs

Posted on October 9, 2017 by de

Today we are happy to announce the availability of Azure Costs for Cloud Solution Providers.
Cloud Solution Providers are facing a serious challenge concerning the Microsoft Partnership. The whole process of generating transparency for consumed cloud resources of their customers, managing the billing process and offering support is on the cloud solutions providers desk. Our cost management for CSPs has the intention to deliver all the tools a CSP needs to implement this part of the value chain. The offering targets three important dimensions a cloud solution provider needs to cover:

Manage customers, accounts & partners

Azure Costs allows to manage all accounts, customers & partners in the complex n-tier business model of the Microsoft CSP Program. This includes a custom spending portal to analyse and manage the performance of every partner and customer including alerts and the powerful mail spending report. Supporting custom markups, discounts and margins allows to adjust the cost structure to the dedicated business model of every CSP.

Offer billing portal capabilities

Staying on top of the cloud usage is easy for CSP customers when their KPIs are right in front of them. The Azure Costs Spending Dashboard provides a clear and crisp overview, containing all important cost- and usage-KPIs at a glance for all CSP cloud customers and partners. Last but not least the billing portal offered to every partner and customer allows to deliver the required transparency a CSP is enforced to offer not only for Azure but also for other services like Office 365.

Multi Clouds & Custom Solutions management

Including self-developed cloud solutions and 3rd party services in the spending management infrastructure gives customers a single pane of glass to track, optimize and govern their spendings. As an essential part of the Azure Costs infrastructure, it opens the platform for other cloud vendors like Amazon and Google as well as sub cloud providers like SendGrid. The ability to build and sell cloud solutions e.g. hosted SAP or virtual datacenter implementation allows every CSP to deliver more value instead of just provisioning resources in Azure.

Interested in the new feature?
Getting started with Azure Costs for CSPs is very easy, just visit our csp portal for Cloud Solution providers and enroll into the CSP program as described above. More information about every feature in detail and the available plans can be found here.

Any questions, wishes or ideas? Try our feedback portal or drop a mail to help@azure-costs.com.

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Category Archives: Feature Announcements

Custom Widgets: Optimize your cloud spendings as personal as you are

Boost your N-Tier Business Model with Cloud Costs Reseller Management

Managing multiple CSP, EA and AWS accounts made easy – Service Provider Portal

VARs handle Managed Services on Azure and Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform at ease