Top 17 cloud cost management tools

Keeping on top of the outlay of your cloud estate is more important than ever. These platforms will help you get a pulse on your cloud use and associated costs, which can add up rapidly.

It feels like just yesterday that we were promised that cloud servers cost just pennies. You could rent a rack with the spare change behind the sofa cushions and have money left for an ice cream sandwich.

Those days are long gone. When the monthly cloud bill arrives, CFOs are hitting the roof. Developer teams are learning that the pennies add up, sometimes faster than expected, and it’s time for some discipline.

Cloud cost managers are the solution. They track all the bills, allocating them to the various teams responsible for their accumulation. That way the group that added too many fancy features that need too much storage and server time will have to account for their profligacy. The good programmers who don’t use too much RAM and disk space can be rewarded.

Smaller teams with simple configurations can probably get by with the stock services of the cloud companies. Cost containment is a big issue for many CIOs now and the cloud companies know it. They’ve started adding better accounting tools and alarms that are triggered before the bills reach the stratosphere. See Azure Cost Management, Google Cloud Cost Management, and AWS Cloud Financial Management tools for the big three clouds.

Once your cloud commitment gets bigger, independent cost management tools start to become attractive. They’re designed to work with multiple clouds and build reports that unify the data for easy consumption. Some even track the machines that run on premises so you can compare the cost of renting versus building out your own server room.

In many cases, cloud cost managers are part of a larger suite designed to not just watch the bottom line but also enforce other rules such as security. Some are not marketed directly as cloud control tools but have grown to help solve this problem. Some tools for surveying enterprise architectures or managing software governance now track costs at the same time. They can offer the same opportunities for savings that purpose-built cloud cost tools do — and they help with their other management chores as well.

What follows is an alphabetical list of the best cloud cost tracking tools. The area is rapidly expanding as enterprise managers recognize they need to get a grip on their cloud bills. All of them can help govern the burgeoning empire of server instances that may stretch around the world.

• Anodot
• AppDynamics
• Apptio Cloudability
• CloudAdmin
• CloudCheckr
• Datadog
• Densify
• Flexera One
• Harness
• Kubecost
• ManageEngine
• Nutanix Xi
• ServiceNow
• Turbonomic
• VMware Aria CloudHealth
• Yotascale
• Zesty

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Direct-hire Application Security Architect Opportunity in Plano, TX

If this opportunity is not a good match for your skills or you are not available but know someone who is, please forward this email to them as we pay referral fees for anyone you refer that we place with a client.

Direct-hire Application Security Architect Opportunity in Plano, TX

The Application Security Architect will be a part of the F&P Business Solutions on our Software team and will report directly to the Head of Architecture. The Architect will work closely with development teams, product teams, and other teams across the organization to integrate security into the product lifecycle from design through deployment. Ideally, the Architect is a subject matter expert in defining security requirements, performing application security assessments, and providing developers with remediation guidance and advice. On any given day the Application Security Architect can be pulled in to evaluate a new system, review a proposed network change, or provide guidance on application security/coding best practices.

  • Work independently with developers, system/network administrators, product owners, and other colleagues to ensure secure design, development, and implementation of applications and networks
  • Perform security architecture design reviews of our products (primarily cloud)
  • Perform or supervise vulnerability testing, risk analyses and security assessments
  • Respond immediately to security-related incidents and provide thorough remedial solutions and analysis
  • Perform code analysis of large applications, manually and using SAST and DAST scanning solutions as well as conducting manual vulnerability analysis
  • Provide remediation guidance and recommendations to developers and administrators
  • Work with Product Development teams to help prioritize and validate urgency of mitigation of identified product vulnerabilities and security feature enhancement requests
  • Define security best practices and standards and ensure Product Development teams understand them and receive pertinent annual secure coding training
  • Work closely with the Global Security Architecture team for security standards alignment

What you need is:

  • Minimum five (5) years’ experience in software development hands-on experience and SDLC practices
  • Minimum two (2) years’ experience in the Application Security Architect role providing application security guidance to multiple product teams simultaneously
  • Experience working with development teams to build secure solutions
  • Experience breaking down complex systems and applications to find flaws
  • Proficiency in reading, writing, and auditing .Net and Angular applications and the ability to pick up new languages/technologies
  • Strong familiarity with common vulnerabilities and attack vectors
  • Knowledge of web service technologies, load balancer services (i.e. Nginx, Elastic Load Balancing, F5, etc.) and RESTful APIs
  • Knowledge of ubiquitous encryption technologies (PGP, SSH, SSL, etc.) and common authentication protocols (OpenID Connect, OAUTH, SAML, RADIUS, LDAP, KERBEROS, etc.)
  • Solid understanding of secure network and system design in both cloud (AWS etc.) and conventional environments
  • The ability to communicate complicated technical issues and the risks they pose to developers, network engineers, system administrators, and management
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills, interpersonal and collaborative skills
  • Must be a critical thinker, with strong problem-solving skills
  • High level of personal integrity, as well as the ability to professionally handle confidential matters, and show an appropriate level of judgment and maturity
  • Self-starter, positive attitude, ability to work independently, enjoys learning and staying current with industry developments, regulations and best practices.

Preferred Experience:

  • Experience as an Application/Product Security Engineer, Architect or Developer
  • A background integrating security testing into the SDLC (preferably the SCRUM framework)
  • Experience providing security training to developers

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