Domain 3 · Optimize Usage and Cost
Architecture decisions, costed up front.
Architecting & Workload Placement is where the cost shape gets locked in — cloud or not, which pattern, which region, which SKU. CloudMonitor puts a real per-workload number on each option, so design review weighs cost the same week it weighs reliability — not at the next invoice.
The problem
Design choices made cost-blind.
Cost shows up at invoice.
The pattern, region, and SKU get chosen at design review. The bill that proves them right or wrong lands months later — when the architecture is already in production.
Migrate-or-retain by gut.
Modernize, re-platform, retain, retire. The call gets made from memory on a whiteboard, not from what the existing workload actually costs to run today.
Region and SKU on habit.
The team deploys to the region and SKU family it always uses. The cheaper-equivalent option never gets priced, and the rightsizing ceiling is set on day one.
How CloudMonitor answers
A real number on every option.
Cost by Cost Group.
Map a workload — application, environment, or project — to the resources behind it. Architecture review gets a per-workload run-rate: what today's pattern actually costs, not an estimate from memory.
Current applications, costed.
Every resource tied to a live workload, with its cost trend, in one view. Modernize, re-platform, retain, or retire — each framed against a real number rather than a guess.
Two options, side by side.
Stand the current pattern's run-rate next to the projection for a proposed one. A brownfield migration or a re-platform gets scoped on dollars before anyone commits.
A trail behind every call.
Each decision carries an owner and an audit trail. When the architecture board asks why a workload moved — or didn't — the answer is on record, not in someone's inbox.
Outcomes
Design reviews that price the architecture.
Per-workload
Run-rate behind every architecture call
Design-time
Cost weighed before the build, not the bill
On record
Every migrate-or-retain decision audited
Related Capabilities
More in the Optimize Usage and Cost Domain.
Usage Optimization
Architectural patterns flagged when a workload could be cheaper without losing performance.
Rate Optimization
Reservation and Savings Plan analysis with break-even modeling and utilization tracking.
All Optimize Usage and Cost Capabilities
See every Capability in this Domain side by side.
Cost groups
One workload, every resource behind it.
A cost group ties an application, environment, or project to the resources that run it — so architecture review reads a single per-workload run-rate instead of stitching one together from the portal.
- Per-workload run-rate finance can hand to design review
- Resource-level breakdown behind every architecture call
- Scope a brownfield migration against what the current pattern costs
Governance
Every change to a cost group, logged.
Placement decisions get questioned later — at the architecture board, at audit, at renewal. The cost group audit log keeps an owner and a timestamp against every change, so the reasoning survives the meeting it was made in.
- Owner and timestamp on every change
- Decision trail the architecture board can read back
- Read-only by design — CloudMonitor records the call, it does not touch your resources
Source: this page interprets the Architecting & Workload Placement capability published by the FinOps Foundation, licensed under CC BY 4.0. The wording, examples, and product mapping on this page are CloudMonitor’s own.
See cost groups against a seeded tenant.
Walk a workload from resources to run-rate, then read the audit trail behind every decision.
