Our Azure Benchmarks for 2025 are almost ready, and we’re inviting you to participate and make this a success for both you and the broader cloud community. But first, let’s explore why benchmarks matter and how they can help you optimise your Azure environment.
Why Do Benchmarks Matter?
In the world of cloud, having an experienced partner can be the difference between smooth sailing and unexpected bill shock. Many high-value Azure services, particularly those focused on data processing and storage, aren’t priced simply by tallying up hours and licences. Often, businesses are told, “We can do whatever you want,” or, “We can’t give you a clear estimate until after deployment.” No wonder so many organisations experience hidden costs and shockingly high bills after deployment!
Benchmarks are our solution to these challenges. While detailed consumption plans for complex services like Azure Sentinel or Data Factory might be difficult to predict without all inputs, we’ve built a method to estimate based on similar use cases, scale, industry, and headcount across the Azure environments we manage. These comparisons allow us to provide realistic forecasts for your cloud costs and usage.
Our 2025 Azure Benchmarks
Our 2025 Azure Benchmark will offer valuable insights into several key areas, designed to help you understand your costs and optimise your Azure environment:
Spend Benchmark
Cloud billing is notoriously complex, and Azure is no exception. We simplify this by breaking your Azure spend into five key categories: Compute, Storage, Security & Management, Backup & Disaster Recovery, and Network. Our benchmark turns these into a consumption composition graph, providing a high-level view of your spending and highlighting areas where you may be over or under-invested.
Price Check
The price you see on the Azure Calculator isn’t always what you end up paying. For example, many Australian Government entities, including Councils, don’t purchase directly from Microsoft. Instead, they go through a Microsoft Partner under an Enterprise Agreement or Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) subscription. We’ve seen cases where customers are locked into prices higher than the retail rate for certain products.
Our benchmark will show how your prices compare to the recommended retail price (RRP) and where you stand relative to other contributors.
Azure Purchasing Options
There are multiple ways to purchase Azure – benefit programs, monthly credit card payments, Enterprise Agreements, and CSP subscriptions with Microsoft Partners. While these models often co-exist, there may be opportunities to unlock savings through negotiation and consolidation.
Our benchmark will analyse your purchasing model and share insights from others, helping you identify ways to optimise your Azure spend.
Data Sovereignty
Data sovereignty isn’t just a concern for government agencies anymore – most organisations care about where their customer data is stored. Many of our customers prefer to keep data onshore in Australia, but since Azure is a global platform, even small provisioning mistakes can lead to data being stored elsewhere.
Our benchmark will identify any resources deployed outside Australia’s four Azure regions, helping you take corrective action where needed.
Cloud Maturity
Many organisations aim to transition to Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, as outlined in their cloud strategies. However, this is often a long-term goal rather than part of the initial migration.
Our benchmark will assess your current cloud maturity and help identify areas where you can begin optimising your environment to align with your future goals.
By participating in our 2025 Azure Benchmarks, you’ll gain valuable insights into how your Azure usage and costs compare with others in the industry. Join us in this journey to better understand your cloud environment, uncover cost-saving opportunities, and help shape the future of Azure for everyone.