Best cloud management tools for business 2017: How to manage your cloud computing usage and costs

Cloudability provides 'data-driven cloud cost management', using detailed metrics to offer businesses insight into their cloud spending.

The software monitors cloud usage and generates budget alerts and daily email reports to keep businesses in the loop with their finances. 

Cost: Custom pricing available.

Designed to automate Amazon Web Services, Skeddly aims to schedule backups, snapshot your EC2 instances and RDS databases, automate devops and even reduce your overall costs.

Interestingly, in terms of security, Skeddly assumes no permissions or access to your AWS account, and it will actually create a custom IAM policy for you, so all permissions can be controlled.

Cost: Pay as you go.

Qstack aims to reduce licensing costs by consolidating various cloud management platforms. Qstack is compatible with AWS and Azure and any EC2 compatible IaaS clouds.

What's more, Qstack works with KVM, VMware and Hyper-V while also being able to unify physical hardware, hypervisors, virtual machines, true bare metal and containers across multiple clouds and internal data centres.

Cost: Available on request.

CloudRanger makes it easy to backup AWS' Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Relational Database Services (RDS) databases. CloudRanger even claims to reduce your AWS EC2 costs by up to 65 percent, by shutting down areas that are not currently in use.

Via a simple dashboard users can manage all AWS integrations, tasks, schedules and multiple users.

Cost: Between $29 (£23) and $249 (£200) a month, with a free trial available.

ParkMyCloud claims to reduce cloud computing costs by up to 60 percent in 15 minutes, through its scheduling on/off times and only charging customers for the computing power they actually use.

Users will be able to manage multiple AWS and Azure accounts and save time with automated schedules and policies with relative ease.

Cost: $29 (£23) per month

CSC's Agility Platform manages the entire lifecycle of data in the cloud from planning, designing and consumption to the total cost of operation of a businesses cloud-based services.

CSC also offers workflow automation and automated firewall configuration over both private and public clouds.

Cost: Available on request.

VMware's vRealise Business provides users with details about virtual machine running costs and helps manage budgets and resources providing detailed reporting of inefficiencies in users' cloud infrastructure.

Cost: VMware vRealise Business is available on a standalone basis or priced on a per user basis.

While Dynatrace application monitoring software is not specifically designed for cloud cost management, it does offer cloud monitoring services within in a dashboard format, aiming to 'eliminate all blind spots'. 

Cost: Free trial and custom pricing available.

IBM's SmartCloud provides cost-monitoring with tracking and usage reports also available. SmartCloud also has a tool that tracks costs and business processes against budgets meaning users have greater control over their cloud finances. 

Cost: Custom pricing is a subscription basis.

Cloud Cruiser uses analytics and smart tags to illustrate a business’s cloud usage and provide suggestions for optimisation. It offers history reports of businesses cloud usage and allows thresholds to be set and users alerted when an overspend is about to occur.

Cost: Pricing available on request.

Cloudyn's software monitors cloud resources, making practical suggestions for optimising usage. Cloudyn will also provide cloud 'trend' reports to make sure businesses are not paying more than they should be. All this information is available on a dashboard and via email alerts. 

Cost: Cloudyn offers a free trial with other pricing available on request.

RightScale aims to bring simplicity to businesses cloud operations and drive visibility with detailed reporting and history tracking. 

RightScale's cloud ROI calculator allows users to determine cost benefits and make informed business decisions. 

Cost: Free trial available and free for up to five users. For more, custom pricing is available too.

Working across open source, hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments, the HPE Helion Cloud Suite provides a centralised dashboard to control resources across business infrastructures enabling businesses to build and operate cloud services across their whole organisation.

According to HPE, Air France reduced its time spent provisioning infrastructure by more than 50 percent after implementing HPE hybrid cloud management solutions.

Cost: Available on request

BMC has a cloud cost management service called 'truesight capacity optimisation' which aims to bring about cost-effectiveness and cost optimisation. 

BMC's dashboard provides reports that allow users to monitor costs and track past transactions.

Cost: Free trial and custom prices available on request.

cloudMatrix is from Gravitant, an IBM company and looks after budget, usage and costs through its centralised cost management system. cloudMatrix provides estimated billing which allows businesses to factor in future costs. 

Cost: Custom prices available on request.