Codename Project Bose: Calculate Azure Cost of an Enterprise by cost centers, divisions, projects

While working on various customer and partner facing roles, I felt the necessity of a simple and flexible solution to align Azure Cost to the customer’s organizational structure. “Project Bose” is a fully operational prototype derived from the same thought process. This is a side project I am working on during my leisure time. I found various customers derived similar solutions in-house, and there are ISV solutions as well. But there are a few fundamental differences between “Project Bose” and all the other solutions I found. “Project Bose” has a flexible backend and hence any changes in organizational structure can easily be implemented on it without disruption. It is also independent of using Resource Tags, which gives it the opportunity to remain non-vulnerable to erroneous values injected intentionally or non-intentionally by IT-Ops.

Project Bose is dedicated to an eminent Indian physicist, who predicted (theoretically) a special behavior of atoms, which later became famous as Bose-Einstein condensates. He also discovered a sub-atomic particle, later named after him – Boson.   

Why Project Bose?

• To replace Azure specific hierarchy of Cost Analysis (Tenant>Management Group>Subscription>Resource Group) with organization specific hierarchy such as Business Unit>Department>Cost Center>Project/Application.
• Provide an alternative option to mark projects/applications under different divisions/departments – moving away from using resource tags.
• Flexible way to replicate organizational hierarchy through easy-to-use interface and change/edit the tree vertically or horizontally with minimum effort and no disruption.
• A great way of presenting ongoing and past expenses on different projects and slice and dice cost at different levels. Optional implementation of forecasting.

How does it work?

• Admins – can create the hierarchy according to organizational structure (ex. BU>Division>Cost Center>Project) and add items at each level. This structure is flexible. They can change the hierarchy at any time. For example – can change name of a Division, add or remove a Cost Center etc.
• Project/Application Owners – can add their project under a specific branch of the organizational tree and then align Azure Resource Group(s) to it.
• Business Owners/Decision Makers – see current and past cost, trends and forecasting.

Base Architecture

Azure Deployment

Sample Visualization

The code base with IaC is available with my GitHub repo. I can share with anyone interested.