MILL5 Azure Best Practices Analyzer FinOps for AI

AI spending is growing faster than what it earns.

Start with the capacity nobody is using. MILL5 runs a read-only analysis of your Azure AI estate and shows you what is idle, what it costs each month, and who can act on it.

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It runs in your own tenant and never reads prompts, completions or your documents.

$105,330a monthFound7 findings$39,000a monthNo traffic1 finding$36,400a monthSizedtoo large1 finding$23,500a monthNoreservation1 finding$6,430a monthComputeleft on2 findings$0dealt withDealt withTick below
A sample estate for a fictional company. Every figure is an estimate. Choose a step to see what is behind it.

Scroll sideways to see the whole chart.

Try it on a sample estate

This is what the analysis hands you. Tick a finding once you would act on it, and watch the total move.

The same kind of list in the product itself. Sample data for a fictional company.
The FinOps for AI report in Azure Best Practices Analyzer with sample data: eight findings and an estimated monthly saving, then findings in rows, each with a recommendation, the subscription, the person connected to it, effort, risk and an estimated monthly saving.

Scroll sideways to see the whole screen.

What you leave with

How MILL5 works with you

MILL5 is a technology consulting firm and a Microsoft partner. About MILL5.

  1. The analysis

    We run FinOps for AI on your Azure estate and take you through what it found. This is where everyone starts.

  2. Strategy

    We work out with your finance and engineering leaders where spend should come down, and in what order.

  3. Accelerate

    The same installation assesses the rest of your Azure estate for cost and risk. See azurebestpractices.com.

  4. Build

    Our engineers carry out the changes you approve.

  5. Operate

    Cost governance and FinOps reporting, for clients whose cloud operations we run.

From MILL5

Score your own AI estate

Six questions. Answer honestly and you will see where the analysis would start.

Do you know how much of your provisioned AI capacity was used in its busiest hour last month?
Is every provisioned deployment still receiving traffic?
Is your steady provisioned capacity covered by a reservation?
Do your training clusters and GPU machines switch off between jobs?
Could you name who is responsible for each model deployment?
Does every subscription that holds AI resources have a budget?

Before you ask

Does it read our prompts, completions or data?

No. It reads how your AI services are configured and Azure's usage numbers, such as request and token counts. It does not call your models or search indexes, so it does not read prompts, completions or the documents in an index.

Where do our findings go?

They stay in your own Azure tenant. They are not sent to MILL5 unless you choose to share them.

How much will we save?

That depends on what is in your estate. The figures are estimates worked from Azure list prices or taken from Azure Advisor, so they may not reflect a discount you have negotiated. Each one needs a check against the workload before anyone acts.

Does this apply if we only pay per token?

Less. Pay-per-token use has little idle cost, so most of the savings here come from provisioned capacity, paid search services and machine learning or GPU compute.

What is FinOps for AI?

FinOps for AI is the practice of managing what AI workloads cost: knowing which capacity and compute you pay for, whether it is used, and who to ask about it. In Azure Best Practices Analyzer, built by MILL5, it is a read-only analysis of your Azure AI spend that runs in your own tenant.

See your own bridge

Tell us which Azure AI services you run and what you most want to find out.

Ask for a walkthrough

Or write to sales@mill5.com. Already a MILL5 client? Ask your MILL5 team.