ManageEngine, a division of Zoho Corp., and a provider of enterprise IT management solutions, has announced the extension of support for its cloud cost management tool, CloudSpend, to Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

This follows the tool's prior support for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, thereby covering the three largest public cloud computing platforms globally, pertaining to market share.

According to ManagineEngine, the principal goal is the streamlining of operational expenses for enterprises leveraging a multi-cloud setup.

CloudSpend has been innovatively enhanced with a cost anomaly detection feature. This detects obscurity in costs, highlighting unexpected increases or resource usage deviating significantly from the norm. It also provides insights on opaque pricing, potentially highlighting hidden and higher-than-expected costs. CloudSpend's GCP features were showcased at Google Next 2024, which took place on April 9.

With an increasing interest in diversifying business operations, ensuring cost-cutting measures, and splitting workloads, organisations are leaning towards the adoption of multiple cloud platforms. Consequently, investments in public cloud adoption are anticipated to reach $679 billion in 2024. This validates the requirement for an efficient cloud cost observability and optimisation platform in order to monitor and manage cloud finances effectively.

Srinivasa Raghavan, director of product management at ManageEngine, said, "ManageEngine estimates that organizations operating in a multi-cloud environment often under-utilise their cloud resources, with their cloud usage topping at 55%.

"We believe that CloudSpend will help businesses rise above such challenges and advance in their cloud maturity journey by offering the visibility to stay on top of their investments," he said.

Raghavan added, "This multi-cloud cost intelligence platform follows FinOps best practices and is boosted with smart forecasting features that help reduce operational expenditure. It bridges the gap between capacity planning and cost optimization for resources running in multi-cloud setups."

The CloudSpend tool also brings salient features to the forefront. It enables organisations to assign costs to various internal groups through CloudSpend Business Units, thereby implementing accountability. It also provides budgeting and forecasting facilities in multiple currencies, coupled with budgetary alerts and usage-based, AI-driven forecasting models. Users can drill down costs at the resource level for in-depth cost visibility using the Resource Explorer feature.

The CloudSpend pricing model caters to businesses of all sizes, extending free tracking of costs up to $3,000 per month of spend on GCP, AWS and Azure Cloud. For spending that exceeds this limit, the paid version starts at 1% of the monthly spend.