Paying for consumption
One of the main obstacles to great Azure cost governance—and, to be honest, to any cloud cost governance—is the old IT misconception that a VM is something known, beloved, and cherished, much like a pet; while in the cloud, a VM is just a service, a commodity, and should be switched off and on according to its real usage.
According to the post at http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/the-history-of-pets-vs-cattle/, servers that are given a friendly name and are considered indispensable and unique objects with critical support are what we call pets; they are manually operated and their owners have a clear affection for every single one of them. If they fail, everyone knows they are down, and the IT folks must immediately work on restoring them until they are back and shiny.
On the other side, arrays and systems built via automation, such as clusters, racks, and anything that is load-balanced, are what we call cattle; they can be switched...
