Sharper Recommendations, Renewal Confidence, and Expanded Azure Intelligence
Cloud leaders today face rising pressure to optimize every dollar spent across Azure, Microsoft 365, and partner ecosystems. With the release of Surveil v4.1.3, we’re delivering the intelligence and controls enterprises and partners need to stay ahead — from stronger Azure cost governance to the industry’s first Contract Center for Microsoft 365 renewals.
This release strengthens our position as the trusted FinOps partner for enterprises and CSPs alike: smarter recommendations, deeper database coverage, enhanced Navigator onboarding, and spotlight innovation in Microsoft 365 contract management.
Surveil for Microsoft 365
Microsoft Contract Center
Microsoft 365 renewals are no longer routine. They are high-stakes negotiations where costs climb, licensing rules grow more complex, and partners often lack the specialized skills to guide customers effectively. Too often, renewals end in bloated contracts and wasted spend.
With Surveil’s Contract Center, that era is over.
Contract Center is the industry’s first data-driven renewal workspace built to give both enterprises and partners a fact-based, collaborative, and optimized way to manage renewals.
Key Capabilities:
- Automatic BOM Builder: Instantly generate a Bill of Materials (BOM) from live tenant data. Eliminate spreadsheets, guesswork, and incomplete inventories.
- Renewal Modeling & Scenario Planning: Test multiple licensing mixes, apply Microsoft offers and deal pricing, and prepare with full confidence.
- Built-In Optimization Recommendations: Factor in Surveil’s right-sizing intelligence before signing — removing underutilized or unused licenses.
- Collaborative Project Sharing: Align finance, operations, and IT in a single secure workspace for renewal decisions.
- Included in Essentials: Available to all Surveil customers with an M365 Essentials license.
👉 Why it matters:
- Enterprises: Negotiate directly with Microsoft backed by defendable tenant data, cutting overspend and aligning budgets to reality.
- Partners: Scale renewal advisory services without adding headcount, productizing renewals into a repeatable, revenue-driving service.
- Finance & Procurement: See the true renewal cost and savings potential before signing.
- IT & Ops: Ensure licenses reflect operational needs — not just vendor terms.
Surveil for Azure
Reservation Charges as Resources
Azure Reservation Charges are now treated as resources in Surveil. This enables custom tagging and smart tagging rule creation for reservation-related costs.
👉 Why it matters: Improves allocation, governance, and chargeback accuracy for reserved capacity, giving finance and FinOps leaders a more granular view of committed spend.
Pipeline Query Enhancements
Expanded Azure pipelines now cover Synapse, MySQL, and PostgreSQL flexible servers, improving discovery and recommendation accuracy across modern database services.
👉 Why it matters: Extends optimization logic to the latest Azure database architectures, ensuring recommendations evolve alongside customer environments.
Cosmos DB Reservation Recommendations
Cosmos DB RI calculations have been updated to align with Microsoft’s new 100 RU/s increment pricing model.
👉 Why it matters: Delivers accurate, up-to-date cost optimization recommendations, restoring confidence in Cosmos DB planning and spend control.
CPU Metrics Legend Enhancement
A clarifying legend has been added to CPU Average metrics to highlight the 4-hour analysis period used.
👉 Why it matters: Improves transparency and decision-making by clearly distinguishing how metrics are calculated versus VM optimization metrics.
Recommendation Planner Enhancement
A major upgrade to the Recommendation Planner introduces ownership management, smart tag filtering, and implementation tracking (with required service request IDs).
👉 Why it matters: Brings full lifecycle accountability to recommendations, improving implementation rates and making optimization outcomes stick.
Redis Cache Reserved Instances
Reserved Instance support now extends to Premium and Enterprise Redis Cache deployments.
👉 Why it matters: Unlocks significant savings opportunities with node-accurate calculations, covering a cost center that often scales quietly and quickly.
Quotas and Usage Information
Surveil now monitors Azure compute quotas across regions and services, showing current usage against available limits.
👉 Why it matters: Prevents deployment failures and disruptions by giving teams proactive visibility into quota constraints.
Surveil Navigator
Onboarding Link Refactoring
Navigator onboarding has been restructured with three distinct link types:
- CSP – Provider: Read-only access to Partner Center datasets.
- CSP – Provider for Bulk (GDAP) Onboarding: Supports onboarding multiple tenants with GDAP relationships.
- CSP – Provider for GDAP Automation: Adds limited write access for automations like GDAP creation, Partner Admin Link verification, and PEC correction.
👉 Why it matters: Gives partners more control, flexibility, and security when integrating Microsoft Partner Center — enabling both scale and precision.
Platform & Usability
Cloud Assistant Enhancements
The Cloud Assistant now includes clickable company overview buttons on the home screen, scrollable answer formatting, and prompts to start a new chat after 15 questions.
👉 Why it matters: Creates a smoother, more intuitive experience that keeps insights flowing while maintaining cleaner, more usable conversations.
Correction from v4.1.2 preview announcement: Some features previewed in v4.1.2 are now fully released in v4.1.3, including the Microsoft 365 Contract Center and Cloud Assistant Enhancements. If you reviewed last month’s notes, this update reflects their general availability.
Stay Informed and Take the Next Step
- New clickable company overview buttons added to the home screen.
- Answers are displayed in a scrolling format for easier reading.
- Users are prompted to start a new chat after 15 questions for cleaner conversations.
👉 Why it matters: A more intuitive, user-friendly experience that makes it easier to engage with Surveil’s AI-driven guidance.
Stay Informed and Take the Next Step
- Already using Surveil? Log into the platform and click the Help icon in the top-right corner, then select Release Notes to explore all the latest features.
- A Surveil partner? Log into the Surveil Hub for deeper access to release notes, on-demand Masterclasses, and partner enablement resources.
- New to Surveil? Contact us to speak with a Cloud FinOps Specialist and discover how Surveil can help your organization unlock savings, strengthen governance, and drive smarter cloud decisions.