Topic
Data & AI Cost Management
What a Microsoft Data and AI platform costs is a design choice, not an invoice after the fact. Everything on capacity, tokens, licences, FinOps and chargeback sits here.
- articles
- 8
- minutes of reading
- 30
- episodes
- 2
Use Cases
Best Practices
- 02
FinOps for a Microsoft Data and AI platform
Cost is a design requirement, not an afterthought. How to set up visibility, ownership and optimisation across Fabric, Foundry, Copilot and Purview.
3 min read - 03
Keeping the token cost of an AI solution under control
Where the money actually leaks in Foundry workloads: context length, model choice, retries and a retrieval step that sends too much along.
3 min read - 04
Capacity and cost optimization in Fabric
Getting a grip on Fabric capacity: measuring, isolating, and the four knobs that really move your monthly bill.
2 min read
How-tos
- 05
How to build a cost model for a Fabric platform
From workloads to capacity units to a monthly figure: a method you can use before you build and test against reality afterwards.
3 min read - 06
How to set up chargeback and showback
Allocating cost to departments across Azure and Fabric, without the argument about the allocation key crowding out the real conversation.
3 min read
Architecture Discussions
- 07
Can You Estimate AI Costs Before Going to Production?
A community discussion about generic LLM costs, reframed as the enterprise question architects actually face: how do you estimate the cost of Microsoft Foundry and Microsoft 365 Copilot before an AI platform goes live?
5 min read - 08
Is Plan in Fabric IQ Too Expensive for SMB Customers?
A community discussion about the pricing model of Plan in Fabric IQ exposes a deeper tension: an enterprise planning platform with session-based billing, tested against the expectations of an SMB user.
7 min read
Listen
The podcast on cost
View the seriesPractise
Test your choices
Reading shows you what it costs. Practising shows you whether you actually make the trade-off in a real engagement.
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Use Cases
Real architecture cases per Microsoft domain and industry: the business challenge, the chosen architecture, why that choice, the alternatives and the trade-offs.
30 casesArchitecture Lab
Practise the decisions in a realistic customer engagement, then read the debrief.
4 engagementsPodcasts
Shows on Microsoft architecture and what that architecture costs: real-world experience, design decisions and trade-offs, playable right here.
26 episodes