Cloud computing has become a mainstay in IT departments. According to a research by cloud solutions provider RightScale, 95% of businesses use cloud technology in some way or the other. Without a doubt, cloud computing has emerged as the most cost-effective solution for businesses to access IT infrastructure and software on the Internet on pay-per-use basis.

However, many businesses find managing the general cloud usage and costs a very challenging task, especially when running across multiple cloud platforms. To better their plight, many companies, including some tech giants, have developed special tools for cloud management. That said, I am listing 7 cloud management tools you may like to choose from for your business in 2017.

Note: There is no denying that a cloud management tool, apart from these 7, could also prove to be the best fit for your business based on features and functionalities you need. So, don’t feel offended if I miss out on your favorite cloud management tool.

7 Tools to Manage Cloud Computing Usage and Cost

#1 Cloudability

Cloudability is an easy-to-use SaaS product, specifically designed for cost management by monitoring and optimizing cloud expenses. It helps provide better, faster and comprehensive access to data that consists information about your cloud spend and usage. Not only this, the software generates budget alerts and daily reports to keep you updated on finance. Cloudability supports multiple public, private, and hybrid cloud service providers.

With Cloudability, it’s easy to identify the resources you’re paying for but not using, and see spending breakdowns to know which services and accounts are costing you the most. Besides, it offers Reserved Instance (RI) planner for effective provisioning of Amazon reserved instances. Cloudability currently supports Amazon AWS, HP Cloud, New Relic, IBM/SoftLayer, Rackspace, Heroku, etc.

#2 Cloudyn

Cloudyn, a SaaS solution, offers various functionalities to provide unprecedented insights into usage, performance and cost of public and hybrid cloud deployments. Besides, the tool offers actionable recommendations and generates customized alerts to help managers improve performance and streamline cloud consumption and spend for increased growth. With Cloudyn, managers can access detailed information about cloud resources, governance, and reporting through a single dashboard and email alerts.

Cloudyn supports AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google, and OpenStack deployments. As far as accountability is concerned, Cloudyn ensures that through accurate chargeback and hierarchical cost allocation management. Cloudyn has more than 2,400 customers across all major verticals, including some Fortune 500 leaders too.

Microsoft Azure vs Amazon AWS: Comparison Between Two Cloud Computing Giants

#3 Rightscale

Rightscale is a cloud management tool that enables users to see and manage applications across all clouds and servers. Be it public, private or hybrid clouds, Rightscale offers a single console for designing, deploying, operating and governing infrastructure and applications. Administrators can easily define service catalogs across public and private clouds with the help of RightScale ServerTemplates. Besides, they can configure and manage their IaaS resources, keep a track on performance and control user access.

The tool provides a single multi-cloud management interface and application programming interface (API) for private and public IaaS environments, including Amazon Web Services, Google, HP, Rackspace, Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer, CloudStack, OpenStack, and VMware vSphere. For cloud analytics, Rightscale offers a dashboard to monitor, forecast and optimize costs across public and private clouds.

Rightscale also reduces downtime via assisted failover, automated backups, and disaster recovery environments. The tool is a good pick for avoiding risks and optimizing cost.

#4 VMware’s vRealize Business

VMware's vRealize Business, formerly known as VMware IT Business Management Suite, is a tool for cloud costing, consumption, comparison and planning. The tool enables managers to keep a check on the cost of virtual machines and get insight into how the shared resources running in the cloud are being utilized. As a result, it becomes possible for the user to manage budgets and resources. vRealize Business makes cloud infrastructure management simple by offering detailed information about capacity and efficiencies. It helps track costs of private cloud or public cloud from one console.

You can integrate vRealize Business with various public, private, and hybrid clouds. With vRealize Business, managers can also hold comparison between actual, planned and estimated spending to identify top spenders and consumers of all IT services. It allows to automatically collect data from vSphere and public clouds, and reference a database of virtual infrastructure expenses.

#5 CSC Agility Platform

CSC Agility Platform helps managers manage consumption, release, and operation of cloud-based services. The platform offers supports for various public, private, and hybrid cloud platforms, including Microsoft Azure, Microsoft System Center, OpenStack, Rackspace, Amazon EC2, CloudStack, CSC, Eucalyptus, HP Cloud, VMware vCenter, VMware vCloud Director, and many more. With CSC, a user can also automate workflow and firewall configuration over both private and public clouds. The release of Agility Platform 9.2 has brought enhanced API and Cloud SDK to simplify integration with third-party systems.

The motive behind CSC Agility Platform was to provide a cloud management tool that increases business agility, speed application delivery, and reduces costs. The platform also offers Application Release Automation to help users manage software releases and application delivery lifecycles.

#6 Microsoft Operations Management Suite

Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS), formerly known as Azure Operational Insights, is a SaaS platform to manage cloud IT assets from a single pane of glass. OMS offers support for various public, private, and hybrid cloud platforms, including Microsoft Azure, AWS, VMware, OpenStack, and many more. Operational insights, site recovery, backup, and automation are some of the amazing capabilities of Microsoft OMS.

OMS also offers real-time operational insights via custom dashboards, integrated search, and solution gallery. So, OMS makes it simple and quick to analyze even millions of records across all workloads and servers, regardless of their locations.

Runbooks and graphical workflow-authoring tools enable automation of manual and repeated tasks. OMS also rids the risk of security breach through Security and Compliance, and also ensures backup and site recovery. With OMS, you can extend existing management investments into the cloud via integration with System Center components, such as System Center Operations Manager.

#7 IBM Cloud Orchestrator

IBM Cloud Orchestrator is a cloud management tool that automates provisioning of cloud services using policy-based tools. The tool speeds up the service delivery time by 90% and reduces time to provision cloud services from weeks to minutes. It helps speed configuration, provisioning and deployment by providing access to ready-to-use patterns and content packs. Cloud Orchestrator also allows integration of management tools like metering, usage, accounting, monitoring and capacity management into your cloud services.

The cloud management tool reduces cost by letting you know the management tools not in use so that you can remove them. It gives rise to the implementation of common processes and fully automates error-prone manual workloads. IBM SmartCloud Cost Management and IBM SmartCloud Patch Management are two additional products of IBM to manage cloud services, usage and cost.

With the rise in adoption of cloud deployment services, a cloud management tool has become the need of the hour to ensure reduced costs and effective management. There are many other popular and effective cloud management tools too, like Dell Cloud Manager v11, BMC Cloud Management, HP Hybrid Cloud Management, etc., that could turn out to be the best fit for your business as well. So, before you choose a cloud management tool, have a thorough assessment of your business requirements, and understand the functionality and offerings of the tool you want to pick for your business.

Have you ever used a cloud management tool before? Which is your favorite cloud management tool? Do you want to add something you think I have missed out in the blog? Please share your views in the comment box below.