Cloud Cost Management

Add an Azure service account to store the credential and access information. You can use this service account for commercial purpose and it should be different from your Azure government service account.

Assign the Billing Profile Reader role to the Azure service principal for your Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA) account to download Azure price sheet data.

Assign the Enrollment Reader role to the Azure service principal for your Enterprise Agreement (EA) account to retrieve billing, purchase, and pricing data. You can assign this role using a Microsoft API.

Add a Google Cloud service account to store the credential and access information.

Set up, manage, and optimize your generative AI solutions on the ServiceNow AI Platform from a single workspace.

List of default Cloud categories applicable to the Machine Learning service category for managing AI services.

A Billing download job obtains billing and usage data from each payer account for AWS. The Rightsizing, Unused resources, and Business hours processes use billing and usage data when generating recommendations. You can cancel any Billing download job individually.

Billing Download jobs download, organize, and store billing data for your payer account on the schedule that you specify. The system analyzes the data to generate reports and to make recommendations for changes in your cloud operations that can lead to cost savings.

Set up access to AWS billing and usage data by following the steps.

Specify the details of a new CI or CI type to enable the CI placement process to assign cost and usage data correctly. The process is a part of Billing Download job execution. The CI placement process associates downloaded cost and usage data with the appropriate CIs.

The Cloud Cost Management application is available on the ServiceNow Store.

Select the service accounts to discover, the credentials for accessing the accounts, and the MID Servers that scan the resources. If you use the Discovery application, the Discovery Manager wizard simplifies the configuration process for discovering cloud attributes. If you use a different method for discovering resources, you can skip this configuration operation.

If your organization uses AWS GovCloud (US) regions, you create a service account for each region. The credentials that you create during the service account creation, are used for Cloud Discovery and Cloud Cost Management.

Cloud Cost Management uses a process that is optimized for each provider. For AWS, Cloud Cost Management compares the calculated potential costs to actual billed costs and then generates recommendations.

Cloud Cost Management uses an optimized Unused resources process for each provider. For AWS, Cloud Cost Management compares the calculated potential costs to actual billed costs and then generates recommendations.

You can configure any MID Server to use a proxy server for Cloud Cost Management operations. Proxy servers support all cloud-based activities such as running Discovery, Billing Download jobs, and Price Sheet Download jobs.

To ensure secure and reliable communications, the Discovery process communicates with your cloud provider accounts and cloud resources through one or more MID Servers. You can set up the MID Servers on your network or in one of your cloud networks.

An AWS Price sheet download job downloads price sheet data from AWS. You can cancel any Price sheet download job individually.

A Price Sheet Download job downloads and stores price sheet data. The Rightsizing and Unused resources processes use price sheet data when generating recommendations.

Add an AWS service account to store the credential and access information.

In Cloud Cost Management, provider services are grouped into service categories. This grouping enables you to use filters to focus your analysis on particular types of service (for example, Compute or Database). To perform more targeted analysis, you can filter for particular services within a service category (for example, Amazon ElastiCache or Azure Database for PostgreSQL are services in the Database category).

Supported CI class types for AWS enable assigning cost and usage data correctly using the CI placement process. The CI placement process places a subset of CIs into corresponding CI tables that are used in the recommendation generation process for Cloud Cost Management.

Create an Identity and Access Management (IAM) user profile that enables access to AWS data.

A Billing download job obtains billing and usage data from each payer account for Azure. The Rightsizing, Unused resources, and Business hours processes use billing and usage data when generating recommendations. You can cancel any Billing download job individually.

Set up access to Microsoft Azure billing and usage data depending on your agreement type.

The Cloud Cost Management application is available on the ServiceNow Store.

Add a Azure GovCloud service account to store the credential and access information. The government service account is designed specifically for U.S. government agencies and their authorized partners.

Cloud Cost Management uses an optimized Rightsizing process for Azure to identify optimization opportunities specific to your environment.

Cloud Cost Management uses an optimized Unused resources process for Microsoft Azure to identify optimization opportunities specific to your environment.

You can configure any MID Server to use a proxy server for Cloud Cost Management operations. Proxy servers support all cloud-based activities such as running Discovery, Billing Download jobs, and Price Sheet Download jobs.

To enable Discovery to communicate with your Microsoft Azure account, you specify your Service Principal credentials while configuring the MID Servers that communicate with your Microsoft Azure account.

An Azure Price sheet download job downloads price sheet data from Azure. You can cancel any Price sheet download job individually.

A Price Sheet Download job downloads and stores price sheet data. The Rightsizing and Unused resources processes use price sheet data when generating recommendations.

In Cloud Cost Management, provider services are grouped into service categories. This grouping enables you to use filters to focus your analysis on particular types of service (for example, Compute or Database). To perform more targeted analysis, you can filter for particular services within a service category (for example, Amazon ElastiCache or Azure Database for PostgreSQL are services in the Database category).

Supported CI class types for Microsoft Azure enable assigning cost and usage data correctly using the CI placement process. The CI placement process places a subset of CIs into corresponding CI tables that are used in the recommendation generation process for Cloud Cost Management.

To manage your cloud spend, you can define and monitor custom budget plans. The system compares the plans with billing data to calculate and report on how well budgets are being met. Understanding budget compliance by groups and service accounts can significantly improve oversight and reduce cloud spend.

A Business Hours job applies policies to identify cloud resources that are running when they should be powered off. It reports those resources and starts or stops them on a schedule you define. Running resources during business hours only can help reduce your cloud spend.

A Business hours job applies policies to identify resources running outside the specified hours, reports them, and manages the start and stop of resources on a specified schedule. Running only during specified business hours can significantly reduce your cloud spend.

Enable or disable the Business hours feature and set a non-business-hour spend threshold to trigger notifications to users or groups. This action helps control unnecessary resource usage and reduce costs.

Fields on the Budget policy creation form help you create a budget policy to specify a budgeted amount, cost type, reset period, and other aspects of the budget.

Understand budget compliance by groups and service accounts can significantly improve oversight and reduce cloud spend.

The Business Insights view in the Cloud Cost Management Workspace provides a unified outlook of your cloud and non-cloud costs. This view helps finance, FinOps, and business teams understand the total cost of ownership (TCO) and unit economics for applications, departments, and business units.

Use the Cloud Cost Management Infra Stack application to process and download billing files with improved data processing speed. The Cloud Cost Management Infra Stack application also supports high transaction volumes.

Enhance your experience by using the modernized and user-friendly Cloud Cost Management overview. This overview page helps you use the Cloud Cost Management application more effectively by reducing complexity.

Choose your preferred currency from the available options that will be shown for all the billing and usage data. The currency that you choose becomes the display currency on all the dashboard widgets, recommendations (rightsizing, business hours, unused resources, reservation/savings plan), budgets, and billing data.

Use the Cloud Cost Management Workspace, the intuitive and streamlined user interface of the Cloud Cost Management application, to analyze the full range of costs that are associated with cloud resources. You can identify and act on opportunities to save money and optimize operations.

To ensure secure and reliable communications, the Discovery process communicates with your cloud provider accounts and cloud resources through one or more MID Servers. You can set up the MID Servers on your network or in one of your cloud networks.

ServiceNow Cloud Cost Management application (formerly Cloud Insights) gives you visibility and control of your cloud usage and costs. It helps you discover all your cloud resources, break down cloud spend by cost center, business service, and other entities. You also get recommendations on how to reduce cloud spend and automate repetitive cost optimization tasks.

Roles are installed with the activation of the Cloud Cost Management application.

Provider services are grouped into service categories in Cloud Cost Management. This grouping enables you to use filters to focus your analysis on particular types of service.

Compare MetricBase (Clotho) data with your Spend data for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to diagnose and troubleshoot Cloud Cost Management billing issues.

Reduce the time required to download Azure billing files by defining the chunk size of a blob.

Create and configure a change creator user so that the Cloud Cost Management application can create change requests on behalf of the insights_admin or insights_owner.

Plan and configure Cloud Cost Management to gain visibility into your total cloud consumption, reduce costs, and optimize the operations of your cloud platforms.

Configure the ServiceNow Otto for Cloud Cost Management application to use the generative AI skills for spend summarization.

Create a record of the AWS credentials in Cloud Cost Management.

Create credentials in the AWS Management Console to specify the credentials of the user when you configure the MID Servers that communicate with your AWS account.

Securely store your Microsoft Azure credentials in the ServiceNow AI Platform credentials store. You must create a service account that accepts billing data for Cloud Cost Management.

Create exports for your Azure service account to download Azure billing data.

Create and apply a Business hours schedule to the cloud resources for enforcing the on/off schedule.

Create a Google Cloud billing account, set up a project and BigQuery dataset, and enable detailed usage cost export so Cloud Cost Management can download your Google Cloud billing data.

To access data securely on your provider account, the Discovery process must be present with appropriate credentials.

Give Cloud Cost Management access to Microsoft Azure billing and usage data by creating a Microsoft Azure service principal.

Create a shared cost allocation policy with  different allocation types to split the cost of shared cloud resources among various business lines.

Associate a tag name with its corresponding tag value whenever a new AI service or a category within an existing AI service is introduced for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

View the list of default tag categories on the Tag categories page. A tag category helps you to enable multiple tag names for representing costs against a single business entity.

To enable accurate memory usage data for use in generating Rightsizing recommendations, you first define memory metrics in your account. You then define a custom memory metric in Cloud Cost Management.

Specify the provider's discount rate for each service account to enable Rightsizing calculations. To generate accurate recommendations, the system analyzes 14 days of usage data, applies price sheet rates, and appropriate discounts.

Domain separation is unsupported for Cloud Cost Management. Domain separation enables you to separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical groupings called domains. You can control several aspects of this separation, including which users can see and access data.

Enable cost allocation for a Kubernetes cluster in AWS Management Console before you run a AWS Billing download job to view the Kubernetes spend.

Enable cost allocation for each Kubernetes cluster before you run a Google Cloud Billing download job to view the Kubernetes spend.

To ensure that cost data for a particular resource doesn’t appear in a report, you exclude the resource by adding it to the Excluded Resources list.

You can remove a resource from the Excluded Resources list.

Learn more about Cloud Cost Management with a sample workflow and reviewing the benefits that it can provide for different users in your organization.

A Billing download job obtains billing and usage data from each payer account for Google Cloud. The Rightsizing, Unused resources, and Business hours processes use billing and usage data when generating recommendations. You can cancel any Billing download job individually.

Billing Download jobs download, organize, and store billing data for your payer account on the schedule that you specify. The system analyzes the data to generate reports and to make recommendations for changes in your cloud operations that can lead to cost savings.

Specify the details of a new CI or CI type to enable the CI placement process to assign cost and usage data correctly. The process is a part of Billing Download job execution. The CI placement process associates downloaded cost and usage data with the appropriate CIs.

The Cloud Cost Management application is available on the ServiceNow Store.

Cloud Cost Management uses an optimized Rightsizing process for each provider.

Cloud Cost Management uses an optimized Unused resources process for each provider.

You can configure any MID Server to use a proxy server for Cloud Cost Management operations. Proxy servers support all cloud-based activities such as running Discovery, Billing Download jobs, and Price Sheet Download jobs.

An GCP Price sheet download job downloads price sheet data from Google Cloud Platform (GCP). You can cancel any Price sheet download job individually.

A Price Sheet Download job downloads and stores price sheet data.

In Cloud Cost Management, provider services are grouped into service categories. This grouping enables you to use filters to focus your analysis on particular types of service (for example, Compute or Database). To perform more targeted analysis, you can filter for particular services within a service category (for example, Amazon ElastiCache or Azure Database for PostgreSQL are services in the Database category).

Supported CI class types for Google Cloud enable assigning cost and usage data correctly using the CI placement process. Some CI class types are placed immediately. The CI placement process places a subset of CIs into corresponding CI tables that are used in the recommendation generation process for Cloud Cost Management.

To perform billing download for Google Cloud, you need specific roles and permissions for various features.

Streamline cloud spend management tasks in the Cloud Cost Management Workspace by using the generative AI skills available in the ServiceNow Otto for Cloud Cost Management application.

Set up access to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) billing and usage data by following the steps.

The Admin view in the Cloud Cost Management Workspace enables you to install, set up, and configure the application through a guided experience.

Improve resource usage and reduce your cloud spend by running resources during the specified business hours.

Assign ownership of one or more service accounts and, optionally, the related CIs to users that have the insights_owner role. An insights_owner can define jobs and policies and can view data for owned service accounts.

Assign ownership of one or more service accounts and, optionally, the related CIs to users that have the insights_owner role. An insights_owner can define jobs and policies and can view data for owned service accounts.

View the list of users that have the insights_owner role and the service accounts that each owner owns.

You can install the Cloud Cost Management Infra Stack application (sn_cld_infra_stack) if you have the admin role. If the application does NOT include demo data or it does NOT install related applications and plugins, delete or revise the following sentence:The application includes related ServiceNow Store applications and plugins if they aren’t already installed.

You can install the Cloud Cost Management application (sn_clin) if you have the admin role.If the application does NOT include demo data or it does NOT install related applications and plugins, delete or revise the following sentence:The application includes demo data and installs related ServiceNow Store applications and plugins if they aren’t already installed.

If you have the admin role, you can install the ServiceNow Otto for Cloud Cost Management (CCM) application. ServiceNow Otto for CCM enables cloud resource managers and users to use the capabilities of generative AI skills in Cloud Cost Management.

Several types of components are installed with activation of the Cloud Cost Management application, including tables, user roles, and scheduled jobs.

Use the Asset Management Executive Dashboard to gain visibility into critical KPIs for Hardware Asset Management, Software Asset Management, and Cloud Cost Management applications via a single dashboard.

Define and monitor custom budget plans for managing your cloud spend by using the Budget view in the Cloud Cost Management Workspace.

Reduce cost by identifying the unused resources and scheduling jobs to power-off or terminate the unused resources.

There are three IT Resource categories in ServiceNow Cloud Cost Management - Server, PaaS Resources, and IaaS Storage.

Reduce your licensing costs by choosing only the Cloud Cost Management Resource Categories that you use.

Create an AWS GovCloud account mapping with an associated standard AWS account to enable Cloud Cost Management to consolidate usage data and provide accurate cost recommendations across your government cloud environment.

Use the Operations view in the Cloud Cost Management Workspace to view and manage your preferences, cost usage tags, and administration-related operations.

Use the Optimization view in the Cloud Cost Management Workspace to review savings opportunities and act on recommendations across Unused resources, Rightsizing, Business hours, and Commitments.

Use the Cloud Cost Management Infra Stack application to process and download the AWS billing files with Assume role authentication at a better speed.

Reference topics provide additional information about the lists and forms that you use to configure and administer Cloud Cost Management.

View the Reserved Instances (RI) report, implement recommendations, and configure processes to convert on-demand payment plans to reservation plans, and save the cost of your resources.

Gain better visibility of resource usage by identifying your over-provisioned or underused resources, configuring rightsizing operations, implementing rightsizing recommendations, and performing various rightsizing operations.

The Commitments feature recommends resources that could decrease costs by the conversion of on-demand payment plans to reservation plans. These plans are also called committed-use discounts, committed-use savings plans, or reserved instance plans.

You can add resources to a currently scheduled job, move resources from one job to another, or remove resources from a job.

The Rightsizing feature analyzes resource usage to recommend better sizes for resources that are wasting money by being over-provisioned or underused. A confidence rating and predicted savings support each recommendation. Schedule Rightsizing jobs to resize the resources you specify.

To ensure that a particular resource is not considered or recommended for Rightsizing, add the resource to the Excluded Resources list. The system continues to collect cost and usage data but does not consider the resource for Rightsizing.

AWS only: If a Rightsizing action fails, the system immediately performs a rollback to return the resource to its original size, restarts the resource if needed, updates the change request with full details, and updates Rightsizing report data.

To rightsize a resource, add it to a Rightsizing job and specify when the job should run. You can also move resources out of one scheduled job into a different job or remove a resource from a job.

Configure Rightsizing processes and specify the amount of potential rightsizing savings that triggers notifications.

The Saved views page displays all spend analytics views saved for your organization. Use this page to manage your customized views.

Billing Download jobs download, organize, and store billing data for your payer account on the schedule that you specify. The system analyzes the data to generate reports and to make recommendations for changes in your cloud operations that can lead to cost savings.

Select a tag category source to control how the Cloud Cost Management application maps cloud resource tags to business entities for cost attribution and reporting.

Configure AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles and permissions to enable Cloud Cost Management using Assume Role authentication.

Set up or update the preferred currency options for your cloud cost and usage data to gain reporting flexibility. These currency options become available for Cloud Cost Management users to choose from.

Fields on the Shared cost allocation policy creation form help you create a shared cost allocation policy.

The Spend analytics page gives you visibility of your cloud spending data across multiple report types, including cloud spend, Kubernetes spend, and shared cost. Use saved views to store and reload your preferred filter configurations, including cost type, time range, and group-by selections.

View actionable optimization insights with a comprehensive AI-generated summary of your cloud spend trends, top cost drivers, and budget alignment with your selected filters and groupings.

Ensure accurate spend reporting by using the Spend view in the Cloud Cost Management Workspace.

Get a quick overview of the important information related to the ServiceNow Otto for Cloud Cost Management application.

These system properties are available for the Cloud Cost Management application.

Tag categories in the Cloud Cost Management application enable grouping multiple tag names under a single category, making it simpler to track costs against specific business entities. In the provider portal, you can define cost tags to associate resource usage with specific business entities. For example, the Application, Test, and QA tags represent cost centers.

Create a tag category to enable multiple tag names for representing costs against a single business entity. For example, multiple users might independently have created the tag names "App", "AppService", and "appl" to indicate applications. With a tag category of "Application", any costs for items tagged App, AppService, or appl are correctly assigned as costs against an application.

The Tag category source setting controls how the Cloud Cost Management application maps cloud resource tags to business entities for cost attribution and reporting.

Cost usage tags in the Cloud Cost Management application are the tag key-value pairs that cloud providers attach to billing line items when resources are deployed.

You can add resources to a currently scheduled job, move resources from one job to another, or remove resources from a job.

The Unused resources feature analyzes usage data to identify resources that are wasting money because they aren’t being used. You can schedule Unused resources jobs to power off or terminate the resources that you specify.

To ensure that a particular resource is not considered or recommended for Unused resources, add the resource to the Excluded Resources list. The system continues to collect cost and usage data but does not consider the resource for the processes of Unused resources.

To terminate or power off an unused resource, add it to an Unused resources job, specify whether to terminate or power off, and specify when the job should run. You can also move resources from one scheduled job to a different job.

The Unused resources feature recommends termination or power-off for resources that are wasting money because they aren’t being used. Configure Unused resources processes and specify the potential savings that trigger notifications.

You upgrade Cloud Cost Management on the System Applications page.

Upload revenue and unit count data to populate the Unit economics dashboard in the Business Insights view. This Unit economics dashboard enables you to view unit count data across applications, departments, and business units.

Unassigned resources policies help you to identify the resources that aren’t associated with a change group and to assign them appropriately. When a resource is assigned to the correct group, the resource can be appropriately governed even as it goes through stages such as patching, upgrading, and reconfiguring.

Use Cloud Cost Management to rightsize, identify, assign, manage, and analyze usage data of your cloud resources.

View details of the subscriptions purchased and consumed by your organization for the managed IT resource types such as Server, End User Computing Device, and Database using the ITAM License Report.

View and manage the upcoming and completed Rightsizing jobs.

View and manage the upcoming and completed Unused resources jobs.