Cloudability launches open beta to help you manage and track cloud spending

Cloud cost-tracking service Cloudability has launched an open beta today that promises to help all types of businesses better manage and track their cloud spending.

With many companies feeling the push to use cloud services instead of local ones, many don’t initially see how hard it can be to track daily spending for pay-per-use or highly scalable services. For example, if your company pays Amazon Web Services to deploy extra virtual servers but doesn’t actually use them until a few weeks later, Cloudability can show you how much you’re spending per day to run those servers needlessly.

“Cloud services are a runaway train right now and adoption is gangbusters,” Cloudability co-founder and chief customer officer J.R. Storment told VentureBeat. “With our cloud spend tracking, you can see ahead of time where you’re going and what you’re actually spending.”

Cloudability’s dashboard (one screenshot is above) is extremely easy to set up and works with more than 80 cloud and application providers, including Amazon Web Services, Google Apps, Salesforce.com, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, and Heroku. On the dashboard you can see each individual service and look into daily detailed reports to identify areas when you can scale back, if needed. On top of that, Cloudability sends a helpful daily email that shows your day-to-day cloud spending.

“Sometimes these cloud services can be hard to use and people get frustrated about overages,” Storment said. “We understand those issues and want to help solve them.”

At present, Cloudability is tracking more than $10 million in cloud spending from its more than 350 private beta customers. Its beta customers saw an average of $2,000 saved per customer each month. The service will also put up an API to encourage developers to use Cloudability’s tracking.

The service is currently free for up to $100,000 in annual spending, but the cost rises as you track higher levels of spending.

Portland, Ore.-based Cloudability is self-funded and has seven employees at present. The company plans to officially launch and expand its offerings in 2012. It may launch a native mobile app that will help track cloud spending on the go as well.

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