Clarity Portal
For many IT leaders, Microsoft 365 and Azure costs can quietly grow in the background. New users are added, licences are upgraded, and before long, spend no longer reflects real usage. Clarity Portal was built to change that.
Introducing Clarity Portal
Clarity Portal is our Microsoft cost optimisation platform, designed to give IT leaders complete transparency and control over licensing and cloud spend.
Built using FinOps best practice, the platform follows three proven phases: Inform, Optimise, and Operate. These stages work together to provide a structured, data-driven approach to Microsoft licence and cost management. Rather than relying on manual reviews or periodic audits, Clarity Portal embeds continuous optimisation into your day-to-day operations.
Effective optimisation starts with visibility. Clarity Portal provides intuitive dashboards that break down Microsoft 365 and Azure usage at both the individual user and workload level, alongside associated costs.
You can see exactly who holds which licences, how those licences are being used across services such as Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams, and where underutilisation may exist. At the same time, Azure costs are consolidated into a single, purpose-built platform designed around the real frustrations our customers experienced with native tools.
Instead of navigating multiple portals or exporting complex reports, Clarity makes it significantly easier to identify what’s driving spend. You can quickly drill into costs by subscription, resource group, or tag, making it straightforward to split bills across departments or projects. Regular reporting can be created and saved in minutes, supporting consistent governance and clearer conversations between IT and finance.
The platform also quantifies your total optimisation opportunity across Microsoft 365 and Azure, giving IT leaders a clear, data-backed view of potential savings before any action is taken.
Visibility alone isn’t enough, you need clear ways to reduce waste. Clarity Portal continuously analyses your environment to highlight practical cost-saving opportunities.
Key optimisation insights include:
- Undeployed licences that have been purchased but never assigned
- Inactive or disabled accounts where licences can be reclaimed after 90, 180, or 365 days
- Specialist licences such as Visio and Project that may not be fully utilised
- Workload activity across Microsoft 365 to ensure licence levels match real usage
- Azure Reserved Instance (RI) utilisation and Savings Plan optimisation opportunities
- Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHUB) eligibility that may not be fully applied
- Virtual machines that could be rightsized to reduce unnecessary spend
- Storage optimisation recommendations (including tier alignment and lifecycle management)
By combining Microsoft 365 and Azure optimisation insights in one place, Clarity Portal enables IT leaders to take informed, practical steps that reduce waste and maximise existing investments.
One of the biggest challenges in licence management is maintaining momentum. Initial clean-ups often deliver quick wins, but without ongoing governance, costs gradually creep back in.
Clarity Portal provides proactive alerts when action is required and supports automated governance processes that reduce manual effort. Reporting capabilities also help IT, finance, and senior leadership stay aligned, turning cost management into a shared, strategic responsibility rather than a reactive task.
Join one of our Clarity Portal demos
Our 30 minute Clarity Portal drop-in sessions are designed to give EA and CSP customers a practical introduction to how they can gain greater visibility and control over their Microsoft 365 and Azure spend.
Hosted by our ITAM and FinOps specialists, these short sessions demonstrate how Clarity Portal helps organisations identify wasted spend, optimise licensing, and embed ongoing cost governance, all through a single, intuitive platform.
Sign up for an upcoming session to see Clarity Portal in action and discover how much optimisation opportunity may exist within your Microsoft environment.
Why costs are hard to control
Microsoft 365 and Azure are essential to modern organisations, but managing licensing efficiently is rarely straightforward. IT teams are often balancing competing priorities, and licence management becomes reactive rather than strategic.
Common challenges we see include:
Licences purchased but never assigned
Users holding higher-tier plans than they need
Inactive or disabled accounts still consuming licences
Limited visibility across finance and IT teams
Unexpected Azure cost spikes without clear root cause
Overprovisioned virtual machines and misaligned storage
Missed Reserved Instance, Savings Plan, or Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHUB) opportunities
Over time, these small inefficiencies compound into significant unnecessary spend. Without clear, user-level insight, it’s difficult to know where to start.
That’s where Clarity Portal makes the difference.
From platform to managed service
Clarity Portal is designed to deliver value quickly. Phoenix onboards your organisation and provides access to the platform, giving you immediate visibility into your Microsoft estate.
Our specialists work alongside your team to continuously monitor licensing, implement FinOps best practices, align IT and finance decisions, and protect long-term savings.
This flexible approach allows you to start with powerful self-service insight and scale into expert-led optimisation when you’re ready.
Why IT leaders choose Phoenix
We work closely with IT leaders across the UK public sector. We understand that cost optimisation isn’t simply about reducing spend, it’s about building clarity, accountability, and smarter technology investment.
Clarity Portal helps you gain full visibility of Microsoft spend, reduce unnecessary licensing costs, improve cross-team accountability, streamline governance, and plan future investment with confidence.
Clarity Portal FAQs
Clarity Portal is a Microsoft cost optimisation platform that helps organisations manage Microsoft 365 and Azure licensing and cloud spend. Built around FinOps best practice, it provides visibility into usage and costs, identifies opportunities to reduce waste, and supports ongoing governance through the Inform, Optimise and Operate approach.
Clarity Portal helps identify where organisations may be overspending across Microsoft 365 and Azure. This includes unused or underused licences, inactive accounts, higher-tier licences that may not be needed, Azure rightsizing opportunities, Reserved Instance and Savings Plan optimisation, Azure Hybrid Benefit eligibility and storage optimisation. This gives IT and finance teams a clearer view of where action could reduce unnecessary spend.
Clarity Portal brings IT asset management (ITAM) and FinOps capabilities together to help organisations manage Microsoft licensing and cloud costs in one place. It provides detailed visibility of Microsoft 365 licences and Azure spend, while supporting ongoing cost optimisation, governance and collaboration between IT and finance teams.
Book your Clarity Portal call
If your Microsoft 365 and Azure costs feel unclear or difficult to control, now is the time to take a closer look.
Book a call with our specialists to see Clarity Portal in action and discover how much optimisation opportunity may be hiding in your environment.
You can also email us at [email protected] or call 01904 562200 – whatever works best for you.