Azure Cloud Cost Optimization News & Updates

Welcome the Azure FinOps & Cloud Cost Optimization updates.

Every week, we’ll update this page with all the news that can help you do cloud cost optimization in Azure.

October 4, 2025

A Fully Managed Kubernetes Experience with AKS Automatic

Microsoft has launched Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Automatic, a fully managed and opinionated experience for running Kubernetes. This offering offloads nearly all infrastructure responsibilities, including node provisioning, scaling, and security.

This move aims to remove the “Kubernetes tax” by tackling expensive operational complexity. By enforcing hardened defaults, it mitigates the security and reliability risks that can stem from misconfiguration, making clusters production-ready out of the box.

Microsoft Unifies Its Commercial Marketplaces

Microsoft has introduced the new Microsoft Marketplace, a unified platform that brings together the Azure Marketplace and the AppSource marketplace. This creates a single destination for finding, trying, and buying thousands of technical and business solutions.

This unification simplifies the procurement and governance of third-party software. For FinOps teams, a single marketplace streamlines vendor management, budget tracking, and the overall process of managing SaaS and cloud software spend.

September 27, 2025

Major Microsoft Licensing and Pricing Changes are Coming

Microsoft announced a significant pricing adjustment for its Online Services, effective November 1, 2025. Prices for services under volume licensing agreements will be standardized, which may result in a notable increase for customers on Level D pricing.

This change makes usage optimization the most critical lever for managing costs going forward. The standardization also levels the playing field between Enterprise Agreements and other contracts like MCA-E and CSP.

Microsoft Recognized as a Leader in Industrial IoT

Microsoft has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Global Industrial IoT Platforms. The recognition highlights Azure’s comprehensive platform, including services like Azure IoT Hub, Digital Twins, and Defender for IoT.

The report also emphasizes Microsoft’s focus on integrating Copilot and generative AI across its IoT services. This is a key area of investment for the company, aiming to bring more intelligence to industrial operations.

September 21, 2025

At-Cost Data Transfers for European Customers

Azure now offers at-cost data transfer for European customers moving data between Azure and another cloud provider. This applies to scenarios where services from different providers are used together in an interoperable way.

This is a major benefit for optimizing costs in multi-cloud environments, as it directly reduces data egress expenses. Eligible organizations can create a support request to receive a refund on their next bill, making interoperability more budget-friendly.

September 14th, 2025

New Cost Management and Automation Features in Azure

Microsoft has rolled out its July and August updates for Azure Cost Management, with a focus on automation and user experience. A key update is support for Service Principals for partners, allowing secure, programmatic access to customer cost data.

These updates also include user-friendly changes like a collapse button in the Azure Pricing Calculator to simplify complex estimates. For FinOps teams, the programmatic access for partners is a significant step forward for automating billing and reporting workflows.

Reduce Logging Costs with Azure Firewall

Azure Firewall’s ingestion-time transformation feature is now generally available. This feature allows you to filter or modify logs before they are sent to Log Analytics for storage.

This is a direct cost-saving mechanism. By reducing the volume of data you ingest and store, you can significantly lower your logging costs while ensuring that critical security insights are still retained.

September 7th, 2025

Good news for those using high-performance storage on Azure, as the price for Azure Ultra Disk Storage has been reduced in several regions. This includes key regions like parts of the US and Europe.

This is a direct cost saving for applications that need top-tier storage performance, like large databases or transaction-heavy systems. It is a good opportunity to review deployments in those regions to ensure you are realizing these new savings

August 31st, 2025

Azure Firewall Now Supports IPv6

Good news for network managers. Azure Firewall now fully supports IPv6 for both Standard and Premium versions.

This allows you to filter and protect traffic in hybrid networks that use the newer IPv6 protocol.

Better IoT Messaging with MQTT v5

For those in the Internet of Things (IoT) space, Azure IoT Hub now supports the MQTT v5 protocol, which is a big update.

This new version of the protocol offers better performance and more features for managing communication with your IoT devices.

August 24th, 2025

Better Cost Views for Your Kubernetes Clusters are Here

Great news for Kubernetes users. The detailed cost analysis view for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is now generally available.

This feature, which was in preview, gives you a much clearer breakdown of your AKS costs, letting you see spending by cluster and even by namespace.

This is a huge step forward for accurately tracking and allocating your container costs back to the right teams.

Microsoft Named a Leader in Cloud-Native Platforms

Microsoft is celebrating another win. Gartner has named Microsoft a Leader in their 2025 Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Native Application Platforms (CNAPP).

This recognizes their strength in providing a complete platform for building and running modern, cloud-native apps.

For FinOps, a mature and well-integrated platform is a good sign, as it usually leads to better and more unified tools for cost management and optimization.

August 17th, 2025

Microsoft Named a Leader in Container Management

Microsoft is celebrating a big win. The analyst firm Gartner has named Microsoft a Leader in their 2025 Magic Quadrant for Container Management.

This recognizes their strong offerings for running and managing containerized applications, especially with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

For FinOps folks, this is a good sign of a mature platform, which usually means better tools for things like cost visibility and optimization for your container workloads.

Microsoft Update Its Prices Globally

Heads up for global companies. Microsoft has announced an update to create more pricing consistency for its online services.

The main idea is that prices in local currencies will be updated more regularly to better align with US dollar exchange rates.

For FinOps, this means more predictable and consistent pricing across different regions, which simplifies global budget planning and forecasting.

Review the full update to avoid any surprises, it’s been a hot topic in the Microsoft Licensing Community.

August 10th, 2025

Your FinOps Hubs Just Got More Stable

This is a great update for reliability! Microsoft is introducing non-breaking “breaking” changes in FinOps hubs 1.2.

The main idea is that when Microsoft updates their cost and usage data formats, they’ll do it in a way that doesn’t break your existing reports and dashboards.

It’s a smart change that means you can trust your FinOps data to be consistent, even as the platform evolves.

New Tools in the FinOps Toolkit

For all the FinOps pros out there, the open-source FinOps Toolkit has been updated to version 1.2.

This new version is packed with improvements to help you analyze your costs and find savings.

It’s always a good idea to check out the latest release for new Power BI dashboards, data connectors, and other goodies to level up your Azure FinOps practice.

Get a Better View of Your AKS Costs

Great news for Kubernetes users on Azure! A new cost analysis view for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is now available.

This gives you a much more detailed breakdown of your AKS costs, letting you see spending by cluster or even by namespace.

This is a huge help for understanding exactly what’s driving your Kubernetes spend and for allocating costs back to the right teams.

August 3rd, 2025

Making Sense of Marketplace and FinOps

For those managing third-party software, Microsoft held a great “Office Hours” session on FinOps and the Microsoft Marketplace.

The key takeaway is how using the Marketplace can really help your FinOps practice. It simplifies things by centralizing your billing for third-party tools right onto your main Azure invoice.

This makes it much easier to track your total cloud spend, manage budgets, and handle procurement, all from one place.

25th of July, 2025

Better Savings Plan Recommendations in Azure

Great news for Azure users! Savings plan recommendations can now be based on your last 7, 30, or 60 days of usage.

This gives you more flexibility to get recommendations that truly match your usage patterns, whether you’re looking at a short-term project or long-term trends.

More accurate recommendations mean you can commit with more confidence and maximize your savings.

Find Idle MySQL Servers in Azure

Time to hunt for more savings! Azure Advisor will now give you cost recommendations for idle Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Servers.

This is a super helpful, direct way to find databases that are running and costing you money but aren’t actually being used.

Getting these alerts from Advisor makes it easy to find and shut down waste without having to dig through metrics yourself.

Older Updates

Here are additional FinOps updates we made that involve information about Azure Cloud Cost Optimization updates