In today’s dynamic business environment, organizations are under pressure to innovate rapidly while managing costs effectively. The cloud, especially with AI at the forefront, is driving transformation across industries. But with rising cloud spend and economic uncertainty, cost efficiency has become a top priority.
To help customers navigate this challenge, Microsoft commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study. The study reveals how organizations can unlock significant financial and operational benefits by leveraging Microsoft Azure’s tools and strategic pricing offers, especially when migrating to the cloud and adopting AI.
Cloud Migration: Accelerating Modernization with Azure
Migrating to the cloud is a foundational step for digital transformation. But many organizations initially struggled with cost overruns, lack of visibility, and inefficient resource usage. The TEI study shows how Azure’s native tools and strategic pricing offers helped overcome these challenges.
Key Enablers of Cost-Efficient Migration:
- Azure Hybrid Benefit: Allows organizations to optimize savings in their migration journey by giving a discount on server licenses and subscriptions and granting hosting and outsourcing benefits
- Azure reservations: A commitment model that enables customers to save on their spend when they commit to a specific resource, in a region, and for a specific term.
- Azure savings plan for compute: A flexible pricing model that enables customers to save on their cost when they commit to a spend a fixed hourly amount for a specific term.
- Microsoft Cost Management & Azure Advisor: Provide real-time insights and optimization recommendations.
- Azure Pricing Calculator: Accurately estimate migration costs and forecast budgets.
“Azure reservations and Azure Hybrid Benefit facilitate moving to the cloud. With these offers and better cost management, we are saving 30% to 35%. Managing our costs without these tools would be an unpredictable nightmare.”
— Senior IT Director, Manufacturing
Quantified Impact*:
- 25% reduction in cloud spending in Year 1 using Microsoft tools.
- $4.9M in direct savings over three years from tool-based optimization.
- $3.8M in additional savings from strategic pricing offers.
AI Adoption: Driving Innovation with Cost-Efficient Azure Solutions
Once migrated, organizations are increasingly turning to AI to drive innovation and competitive advantage. Azure doesn’t just support AI workloads, it makes them more cost-effective and scalable.
Key Enablers of AI Adoption:
- Azure AI Foundry Provisioned Throughput reservations: Get cost savings compared to provisioned throughput (PTU) hourly pricing.
- Microsoft Cost Management & Azure Advisor: Help forecast and optimize AI-related cloud spend.
- Strategic Pricing Offers: Enable predictable budgeting and reinvestment into AI initiatives.
“Leveraging Microsoft tools and strategic pricing offers is not only increasing profitability but also putting those savings into more interesting projects like AI with fraud prevention work and the customer experience.”
— VP of Analytics Engineering, Financial Services
“Azure reservations for AI projects using PTUs has helped our AI initiatives. It has helped better predict costs.”
— CIO, Healthcare
Unquantified Benefits:
- Increased cloud insights and visibility.
- Improved governance and accountability.
- Enhanced productivity (24% by Year 3).
The Bottom Line: Unified Transformation with Azure
The TEI study concludes that Azure delivers a unified approach to cloud computing, enabling organizations to:
- Migrate to the cloud efficiently with cost control
- Adopt AI rapidly by reinvesting savings into innovation
- Achieve a net present value (NPV) of $8.7 million over three years
- Realize a 35% reduction in cloud spending in Year 1
“With Microsoft tools, we can focus on higher value projects. Instead of reviewing reports and conducting cost audits, we can build new tools and build with genAI. We can innovate faster.”
— Vice President of Analytics Engineering, Financial Services
Ready to Dive Deeper?
This blog is just the beginning. The full Forrester TEI study is packed with insights, customer stories, and financial modeling to help you build your business case for Azure.
*To understand benefits, costs, and risks, Forrester interviewed eight decision-makers with experience using the evaluated Azure solutions. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the results from these decision-makers into a single composite organization.
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