Continuous software delivery startup Harness Inc. is aiming to help its customers rein in their cloud computing expenses with the launch of an intelligent cloud cost management module.

Harness is best known for its continuous delivery-as-a-service platform that relies on machine learning algorithms to monitor new software releases in case they create problems. The service makes it easier for developers to understand what’s happening in an application’s baseline environment, and if a new update starts acting up, they can initiate an automatic rollback to the previous version of that app.

With the launch today of its Cloud Cost Management module, Harness is hoping to help customers even more, this time by making their applications cheaper to run. The new cloud cost management tools are said to combine artificial intelligence with automation to reduce costs and provide more insight into exactly how those costs are broken down. The idea is to help customers get more value from the cloud, Harness said.

As every enterprise knows, cloud computing costs can quickly add up when dozens of application are running on services such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud. But what many don’t know is that a lot of those costs are avoidable, associated with servers and other resources sitting idle, waiting to be used.

As Harness Chief Executive Jyoti Bansal explained, “most companies realize their cloud costs are astronomical, but how they turn it around is the hard part.”

Harness’s cloud cost module is made up of four components, including a Cloud AutoStopping tool that was launched in June and an updated user interface that provides more visibility into cost perspectives. There’s also an entirely new Cloud Cost Business Intelligence tool and More Kubernetes Optimization Recommendations feature.

These four components work together to automate idle resource management so companies can minimize spending on resources that are sitting unused. They also provide tailored recommendations on what companies can do to optimize their cloud infrastructure. Further, it provides a more accurate forecasting model so companies will know what they’re likely to be billed based on the resources they allocate. That can help them to avoid overrunning their budget, Harness said.

Costs can also be broken down across AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and Kubernetes, Harness said. And should cloud costs suddenly spike unexpectedly, Harness can use its anomaly detection tools to find out why, so the situation can be remedied quickly.

“Our own engineering team use-tested out these new capabilities and they were able to reduce AWS non-production spend by 25% and Azure non-production spend by 50%, saving more than $125,000 annually,” Bansal said.

Image: Harness