Managing Cloud Cost Anomalies for FinOps

Cloud cost anomalies are unpredicted variations (typically increases) in cloud spending that are larger than expected based on historical patterns. 

Misconfiguration, unused resources, malicious activity or overambitious projects are some of the reasons for unexpected anomalies in cloud costs. Even the smallest of incidents can add up over time leading to cost overruns and bill shock.

As cloud billing data is collected and reviewed periodically, it is often difficult for FinOps teams to detect anomalies related to cloud costs in real or near time. 

According to the State of FinOps 2022 report, 53% of organizations indicated that it takes days for their FinOps teams to respond to cost anomalies. It is probably because only 25% of companies have implemented automated workflows to manage anomalies. 

Measuring cloud cost anomalies

Anomaly management is composed of three distinct phases that should be measured separately:

• Time to detection (occurrence to discovery/acknowledgement) 
• Time to root cause (time of investigation)
• Time to resolution (total duration of the anomaly)

Additionally, you should also measure the count of anomalies within a given period (e.g., day, week or month).

Automated, machine learning–based anomaly detection systems, such as Anodot, allow the FinOps team to react quickly to avoid unexpected costs. 

Managing cloud anomalies with Anodot

Anodot’s fully automated AI detects anomalies in near real time and alerts the appropriate teams only when risk is meaningful, enabling quick response and resolution.

With Anodot’s continuous monitoring and deep visibility, engineers gain the power to eliminate unpredictable spending. Anodot automatically learns each service usage pattern and alerts relevant teams to irregular cloud spend and usage anomalies, providing the full context of what is happening for the fastest time to resolution.

Anodot seamlessly combines all of your cloud spend into a single platform. Monitor and optimize your cloud costs and resource utilization across AWS, GCP, and Azure. Deep dive into your data details and get a clear picture of how your infrastructure and economies are changing. With Anodot, you can:

Get complete visibility into AWS, Azure, GCP and Kubernetes costs:

• Understand, divide, track and attribute every dollar spent in context
• Easily customize reports and dashboards for FinOps stakeholders
• Manage Kubernetes spending and usage from the same view as your multicloud services

Take action and continuously reduce your cloud costs:

• Pursue the most pertinent cost reduction opportunities with 40+ types of cost savings recommendations
• CLI and console instructions provided alongside each insight to enable engineers to take action
• Purchase services efficiently with analysis and customized recommendations

Plan your usage effectively and prevent bill shock:

• Machine-learning based forecasting accurately predicts spend and usage, empowering you to anticipate changing conditions and deliver
• Detect, alert on, and resolve irregular spending and usage anomalies in near real time
• Assess enriched Anodot data via our powerful API and leverage within your other tools

With Anodot, FinOps practitioners can continuously optimize their cloud investments to drive strategic business initiatives.