Why MCM FinOps
The problems with managing cloud costs per provider and how MCM FinOps solves them.
Why MCM FinOps
Cloud spend is one of the fastest-growing line items for any engineering organisation, yet the tools provided by AWS and Azure are designed in isolation. Cost data lives in separate consoles, budgets are scoped per provider, and recommendations are buried in different dashboards. Gaining a true picture of what your infrastructure costs — and what you can do about it — requires stitching together data from multiple systems by hand.
Challenges & How MCM Solves Them
Each challenge below is a real friction point teams face when managing cloud costs across providers without a unified layer.
1. No Unified View
AWS Cost Explorer and Azure Cost Analysis use different terminology, currencies, and cost categories. There is no single screen showing what you spend across both.
How MCM solves it: MCM pulls per-resource cost data from AWS CUR and Azure Cost Details API daily, normalises it into a common schema with a unified currency (USD) and canonical resource types, and presents everything in one dashboard.
2. Inconsistent Metrics
Cost data is normalised differently per provider, making cross-cloud comparisons meaningless without manual mapping.
How MCM solves it: Every cost record is stored with canonical resource types and a unified currency regardless of its origin. AWS and Azure spend is directly comparable without any manual conversion.
3. Siloed Budgets
Provider-native budgets are scoped to a single account or subscription. There is no way to set a budget that spans AWS and Azure together or filters by a custom tag across both.
How MCM solves it: MCM budgets can be scoped to a provider, a specific account, a custom tag, or the entire estate. Budget evaluation runs against normalised cost data, so a single budget covers both clouds simultaneously.
4. Delayed Reconciliation
AWS finalises billing on the 7th of the month; Azure on the 5th. Without automation, teams manually check both portals to reconcile actuals against forecasts.
How MCM solves it: On the 9th of each month, MCM automatically replaces provisional daily data with finalised billing figures from both providers. No manual portal checks required.
5. Scattered Recommendations
Right-sizing suggestions live in AWS Compute Optimizer; Reserved Instance advice lives in Azure Advisor. There is no priority queue across both.
How MCM solves it: Right-sizing, Savings Plan, and Reserved Instance recommendations are pulled from AWS Compute Optimizer and Azure Advisor into a single prioritised queue, sortable by estimated savings and implementation effort.
6. Reactive Management
Teams only discover overspend after the fact, when a bill arrives, rather than being warned while spend is trending toward a threshold.
How MCM solves it: MCM budgets track both actual spend and forecast spend. An alert fires before you breach the cap — giving teams time to act rather than just explaining an overage.
MCM vs Managing Costs Individually
| Aspect | Individual Provider Consoles | MCM FinOps |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-cloud view | Separate logins per provider | Single unified cost dashboard |
| Cost comparison | Different currencies and categories | Normalised to USD with canonical types |
| Budgeting | Per-account, per-provider only | Cross-provider budgets with tag-level scoping |
| Forecasting | Provider-specific only | 12-month cross-provider forecasts with confidence ranges |
| Recommendations | Scattered across provider dashboards | Unified queue sortable by savings and effort |
| Alerts | Threshold on actual spend only | Alerts on actual spend and forecast (before breach) |
| Reconciliation | Manual tracking per provider billing date | Automated on the 9th, integrated into budget evaluation |
Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Unified cost dashboard | View and filter spend across AWS and Azure accounts in one place |
| Multiple view modes | Table, chart, topology, grid, and map views for flexible cost analysis |
| Cost grouping | Group by region, category, resource type, cost type, or sub-type |
| Budget management | Create budgets scoped globally, per provider, per account, or by custom tag |
| Budget alert statuses | Under Budget, Might Exceed (forecast-based warning), and Over Budget |
| 12-month forecasting | Rolling monthly forecasts per account, region, and resource type with high/low confidence bands |
| Recommendations | Right Sizing, Savings Plans, and Reserved Instances in a single prioritised queue |
| Recommendation workflow | Track each recommendation through New → In Review → Approved statuses |
| Resource-level cost | Drill down from account to individual resource cost history |
| Execution history | Audit trail for every cost, forecast, budget, and recommendation job run |
Cost
MCM pulls daily cost records from AWS Cost and Usage Reports (CUR) and Azure Cost Details API and normalises them into a single schema. Every cost record carries a canonical resource type, account, region, and unified currency so AWS and Azure spend is directly comparable without manual conversion.
The cost dashboard lets you filter by provider, account, region, resource type, or custom tag and switch between table, chart, and topology views. You can drill from an account-level summary all the way down to the cost history of an individual resource.
What you get: A single screen that replaces AWS Cost Explorer and Azure Cost Analysis — no more toggling between two portals to understand your total cloud spend.
Forecast
MCM generates 12-month rolling cost forecasts per account, region, and resource type using historical spend trends. Each forecast includes high and low confidence bands so you can see both the expected trajectory and the plausible range.
Forecasts run automatically on a scheduled basis and are updated as new daily cost data arrives. You can view forecasts alongside actuals in the same chart to spot where spend is trending above or below expectations.
What you get: Forward-looking spend visibility that lets you plan budgets and resource changes ahead of the billing cycle rather than reacting to surprises after the month closes.
Recommendations
MCM pulls cost optimisation recommendations from AWS Compute Optimizer and Azure Advisor and surfaces them in a single unified queue. Recommendations cover three categories:
- Right Sizing — instances running at consistently low utilisation that can be downsized
- Savings Plans — commitment-based discounts on AWS that reduce on-demand costs
- Reserved Instances — 1 or 3-year reservation options with estimated savings amounts
Each recommendation shows the estimated monthly savings, the effort to implement, and the current status. You can move recommendations through a workflow: New → In Review → Approved so the team has visibility into what is being acted on.
What you get: A prioritised to-do list for cost savings that spans both AWS and Azure — no more hunting across separate advisor dashboards.
Budgets
MCM budgets can be scoped to the entire estate, a specific provider, a specific account, or a custom tag key/value pair (e.g. team=platform). A single budget can cover both AWS and Azure simultaneously.
Each budget tracks both actual spend and forecast spend against the defined cap. When forecast spend is projected to exceed the budget before the month ends, MCM raises a Might Exceed alert — giving you time to act before the budget is actually breached.
Budget statuses: Under Budget, Might Exceed (forecast-based warning), Over Budget.
What you get: Proactive spend guardrails that warn you before overruns happen, scoped to any level of granularity your organisation needs — from a single account to the entire multi-cloud estate.
Enterprise Currency Rates
By default, MCM normalises all costs to USD. Enterprises operating in other currencies — or MSPs billing customers in local currencies — can define custom exchange rates to override the automatic USD conversion.
There are two modes:
- Auto-generated rates — MCM uses a standard USD base rate to convert costs. No configuration needed.
- Custom rates — Enterprise Admin defines the exchange rate for one or more currencies (e.g. EUR, GBP, INR). All cost views, budgets, and forecasts then display in the chosen currency at the defined rate.
Custom rates can be updated at any time; all historical cost views reflect the updated rate on the next refresh.
What you get: Cost data presented in the currency your finance team works in, with rates you control — eliminating the need for a separate spreadsheet to convert cloud spend into your reporting currency.