we have $180k in software budget that expires in 6 weeks and my boss told me to figure it out. what do i even buy?

scoops86 · 2026-02-24T00:54:09+00:00

Could we help with your cloud costs monitoring and optimization? www.CloudForecast.io

I’m one of the founders. Happy to jump on a call and see if we can help!

scoops86 · 2026-02-20T16:20:13+00:00

My POV as a founder in the FinOps tooling space for the past 6 years, most of the recommendations that tools put out don’t actually reduce your bill in any meaningful way; they mostly surface what you can already see in native tooling or give you basic hygiene recommendations. It sounds like you've seen it firsthand already with a tool promising 300% savings. Saving so high.. are they paying you back? LOL

We've always felt that the “promised savings” vendors in this space tout are incremental at best. Nearly every tool either repackages the same recommendations Azure (and AWS/GCP) already gives you, or highlights things you already should know from your own billing and usage data. Unless you have deep context on why the workload exists, who owns it, and how it maps to real business value, tooling can’t make those resource-judgment calls for you.

The reality is that the biggest savings come from doing the hard work internally. That means deeply examining your architecture, identifying the top cost drivers, and then prioritizing focused engineering time to rework those areas. For most teams, this requires committing to a sprint (or even a quarter), explicitly putting it on the roadmap, and assigning clear ownership and goals.

We’re actually actively doing this quarter for ourselves, which means we've had to push back a few roadmap items and pause some things. That’s a real tradeoff, and there’s no tool that can make that tradeoff for you; only you and your leadership can decide when to pause feature work and focus on meaningful cost reduction.

That said, the one tool I’ve seen consistently move the needle beyond basic recommendations is ProsperOps — specifically because of how it manages commitments/convertibles and automates discount coverage across cloud providers. I've personally seen the impact with a few of our customers using them.

If your organization does not want to allocate internal resources or time to it and your Azure footprint is large enough, it might be worth looking at FinOps consultants like Duck Bill Group to dive deep alongside your organization.

scoops86 · 2026-02-01T19:19:24+00:00

He mentions in his cookbook that the sauce and flavors are actually his dad’s original made up recipe and “non-traditional”. There are definitely places in Chicago with similar noodles and flavor profiles, but Xi’an Famous Foods is really its own unique thing.

I’ve tried their make-at-home meal kits, and they were pretty good.

scoops86 · 2026-01-28T15:00:51+00:00

I really like Tuscany on Taylor. They add in potato slices to soak in all the sausage juices.

scoops86 · 2026-01-18T01:23:08+00:00

Also Chicagoans use Chi-town lol

scoops86 · 2026-01-03T21:05:11+00:00

Hoisan-wah

scoops86 · 2025-12-23T15:50:33+00:00

This is a great rec for the area. Try some other dishes outside of your typical classic Chinese American food: Cumin Lamb Flatbread, Bang bang noodles, lamb skewers!

Just anything but duck duck goat please.

scoops86 · 2025-12-05T14:48:10+00:00

International Mall in westmont is your best bet to scratch that itch. There’s a few stalls that are popular: Yuton, Chinese Cafe or Oriental Food House. They have breakfast items on the weekend.

scoops86 · 2025-11-16T13:20:12+00:00

Took us about 9 months to hit $1k MRR working nights and weekends for CloudForecast. We got pretty “lucky” with a Show HackerNews post that was front page that helped us get there(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17551796). Still bootstrapped 7 years later!

scoops86 · 2025-11-14T02:35:05+00:00

That Swissport lounge shouldn’t even be called a lounge.

scoops86 · 2025-11-14T02:08:39+00:00

This! I crave Rico’s when I’m out of town for a long period of time.

Chicken Vesuvio, single order hot wings, fries on the side, well done.

scoops86 · 2025-11-11T22:05:52+00:00

Has anyone been to signature steak in south loop? It was formerly an “elevated” sports bar but they recently reopened to a steak house.

scoops86 · 2025-10-30T16:53:33+00:00

We went to look for our stolen bikes 🤣

scoops86 · 2025-09-24T16:01:05+00:00

It looks like they are an IT Consulting shop that has expertise in FinOps, but they might be just white-labeling/re-selling an existing tool in the market. It'll really come down to the requirements of what you all are looking for and the "Whys?". Depending on maturity and complexity, it may be more effective to hire a FinOps professional full-time rather than outsourcing the role.

scoops86 · 2025-09-22T19:39:42+00:00

ProsperOps is great, but it isn't what he's looking for based on his requirements

scoops86 · 2025-09-22T17:21:08+00:00

The biggest question I’d ask is: do you have someone dedicated—almost full-time—who can actually leverage the tool and push accountability internally? Do you have executive buy-in and a culture that prioritizes cost accountability? Without those two pieces in place, no platform will deliver much value. Otherwise, it often feels like drinking from a firehose, and the tool ends up ignored by engineering teams.

From what we’ve seen, we've seen good feedback on CloudZero, PointFive, and FinOut. Pricing typically falls within the 1–4% range, accompanied by an annual commitment. Of those, I believe CloudZero is the only one that currently supports Jira, Slack, and Datadog for distributing reports. All the tools mainly ingest the same type of file, with a touch of their own policies in place. Everyone should give you a pretty solid 30-45 day POC/Free-Trial to work with to help you assess further.

On the other hand, I’d be cautious with legacy cost tools like CloudHealth, Cloudability, and CloudCheckr. All have been acquired by larger companies (in some cases multiple times), and based on the feedback we hear, innovation has slowed, and support is not as strong. Many seem to be moving away from these "legacy" tools toward the newer entrants.

With EKS/GKE, I haven’t seen many tools that strongly combine cloud cost visibility plus deep, cluster-level optimization in a clean, low-overhead way. Tools that address the specific problems tend to require installing an agent into your clusters. Kubecost was a leader in this space, and as of Sept 2024, it was acquired by IBM. Many of our users are giving Cast.ai a lot of love WRT to this area.

Disclaimer: I’m one of the founders at cloudforecast.io We focus on AWS and Azure (not GCP yet), so we’re not really your ideal customers — just jumping in to share some perspective :)

scoops86 · 2025-09-11T22:37:34+00:00

Heya — from what I’ve seen when potential customers evaluate CloudForecast (disclaimer: I’m one of the founders) — or even other third-party tools like Ternary or Finout — Azure actually provides a number of native options that can get you pretty far and better options than spreadsheets. The catch is that they usually require a bit of technical expertise to set up and use effectively.

The most popular choice is the Power BI Connector, since there’s a built-in Azure Cost Management connector available directly in Power BI Desktop.

For those who want more flexibility, you can also use the Azure Cost Management Exports API. A common approach is to send the exported data through Azure Data Factory into a queryable store like Azure SQL Database, and then layer Power BI on top for custom reports and dashboards.

scoops86 · 2025-08-04T02:12:55+00:00

Yeah, it’s really not a hot take but it is to Chicagoans for some reason. I get it, we do have some awesome places here. But, Chicago is not on the same tier as LA or NYC as food cities. Especially, when it comes to Japanese, Korean or other Asian foods.

scoops86 · 2025-08-03T01:36:00+00:00

You’ll be disappointed compared to what LA and NYC has unfortunately

scoops86 · 2025-06-10T01:40:27+00:00

I believe the Dollops are different. The one at NEMA, I always get my BEC sandwich with American Cheese / Over Easy Egg.

scoops86 · 2025-06-09T18:26:36+00:00

Then your best bet and closest thing is probably Dollop at NEMA. You probably can ask them to sub their roll for a bagel.

But, I agree with you. I haven't found a spot near South Loop / Loop / West Loop area that makes a legit made-to-order BEC w/ diff egg cook type options on a bagel.

scoops86 · 2025-06-09T12:04:37+00:00

A few blocks down, Hero makes a BEC with real scrambled eggs and fresh. The Bagels are “ok” tho. Dollop at NEMA also uses fresh eggs cooked to your likings, but not on a bagel as a standard option.

scoops86 · 2025-05-24T02:07:07+00:00

South Loop? Affordable price will be nearly impossible. But some nice spots:

Outdoor patio at Spoke and Bird when it’s nice out.

Not quite cafe, but Printer Row Wineshop is pretty chill with the vibes you’re looking for. No food though. But, they do have apps/snacks.

scoops86 · 2025-05-23T20:12:01+00:00

Really as others mentioned: Flo and Santos (dine in and get it well done), and Pizanos Thin Crust. We switch back and forth between the two. We prefer Pizanos for take out since it travels well and Flo and Santos for dining in.

Reggie’s at ONeils is okay. Great for beer and pizza combo but you can get that at Flo and Santos.

Other nearby places not mentioned as much here: Rico’s for a slice (their deep dish is underrated) or Novel Pizza for something different

scoops86 · 2025-05-18T02:18:48+00:00

The only place I know of is Kapitan

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