r/u_FamousRun538

I've spent a fair amount of time working with AWS and Azure in enterprise environments, including looking at cloud infrastructure from both the architecture and cost-optimization side.

One thing that keeps bothering me:

Despite all the native recommendations and FinOps tools available today, there still seems to be a huge amount of cloud spend that could be optimized.

And I'm not convinced the problem is simply a lack of visibility.

We already have things like Azure Advisor, AWS Compute Optimizer, Cost Management, Cost Optimization Hub, Reservations/Savings Plans, and a long list of commercial FinOps platforms.

So I'm starting to think about building an open-source GitHub repository focused specifically on actionable cloud cost optimization.

But before I decide what to build, I want to start with a simple question:

If you could have one tool deeply analyze your Azure environment, what would you want it to optimize?

Would it be:

Compute / VM rightsizing?

Managed disks and storage?

Databases?

Network / egress?

Kubernetes?

Reservations / Savings Plans?

Idle resources?

Storage tiers?

Non-prod scheduling?

Something much more specific?

And for those already using Azure Advisor or other FinOps tools:

What do you feel they get wrong, miss, or make difficult to act on?

I wish I had a subscription to these to understand gaps 3rd party FinOps tool have.

I'm particularly interested in the gap between:

"The tool says you could save $X"

and

"Here's why you can actually save $X safely in this specific workload."

I don't want to build another dashboard full of recommendations.

I'd like to build something where the community can contribute optimization rules, workload signals and validation logic over time.

So if you could wave a magic wand and eliminate one category of cloud waste from your environment, what would it be?

I'm going to use the responses here to decide what the first version of the GitHub project should actually solve.