// Governance

Moving to the cloud shifts infrastructure spend from capital expenditure (CapEx) to operational expenditure (OpEx)—but only if you think about cost correctly from the start. This episode covers the cloud cost mindset: right-sizing, auto-scaling (scale out vs scale up), compute resource consolidation, governance through resource tagging and policy, pricing calculators, reserved instances, and how to build cost awareness into your architecture from day one.

Cloud is not inherently more expensive than on-premises once you account for hardware depreciation, power, cooling, and network costs — but it requires designing cost into your architecture from the start. This Azure Mythbusters episode examines fixed versus variable cost envelopes, auto-scaling strategies for spiky workloads like Black Friday traffic, the IaaS/PaaS/serverless cost spectrum, and cost as an implicit sixth pillar alongside the five pillars of software quality.

Moving workloads to Azure does not eliminate management decisions — scalability, resilience, and high availability all require deliberate configuration. This Azure Mythbusters episode contrasts scale-out via VM Scale Sets and auto-scale rules with scale-up by increasing VM SKU size, explains availability sets and availability zones, and shows how PaaS services like Azure Functions still require you to choose the right plan and design cross-region resilience with Traffic Manager.

Requirements remain essential when migrating to or building on Azure — from availability SLAs and RPO/RTO targets to compliance, data sovereignty, and cost. This Azure Mythbusters episode uses composite SLA calculations and Azure Architecture Center reference architectures to show how under- or over-specifying requirements directly shapes your design, region strategy, and overall cost.

Cloud Governance seems to have come up a few times over the past few weeks, so I wanted to post a short, sharp blog about it!