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For companies planning cloud deployments, creating accurate cost models and forecasts across the ever-growing number of cloud providers and choices can be overwhelming. Businesses are also leveraging more than one cloud provider so accurate management of cloud costs becomes more complex.

According to a recent RightScale survey of more than 600 companies, 68% of respondents reported that they are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy. In addition, new cloud providers continue to emerge and existing providers frequently change pricing, making it difficult to keep manual spreadsheets up-to-date.

To facilitate better budgeting, RightScale has unveiled a free cloud cost forecasting website called PlanforCloud. IT organizations will find tools to model various architectures and usage patterns, access up-to-date pricing from a variety of cloud providers, and produce detailed cost reports in just a few minutes.

PlanForCloud can be used by any business to forecast clouds costs, including those that are not currently RightScale customers or users of cloud services. No cloud provider accounts or current cloud deployments are required to use the site or calculate cloud costs.

The service enables sophisticated modeling of the components of cloud deployments, including servers, storage, database and data transfer, as well as usage scenarios that incorporate growth, seasonality and other variability in the consumption of cloud resources. These can be done based on up-to-date prices from major cloud providers including Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Engine, Microsoft Windows Azure and Rackspace, and the list is growing.

"Predicting and managing cloud costs is a critical component of realizing the ROI of cloud computing," said Peter Adam, Business Development Director at Add Latent Ltd. "The forecasting offered by PlanForCloud coupled with the cost management capabilities we can get through the RightScale Cloud Management Platform, enables us to track our past usage, budget for future cloud costs and ultimately, be more efficient with our IT spend."

"Knowing the cost of cloud services is critical whether companies are making their first foray into cloud computing, planning to deploy additional resources or managing their overall budget for cloud spending," said Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale. "With our cloud management customers, we have seen firsthand that they need a better way to forecast cloud costs to predict spending and choose the right cloud strategies and providers."

"PlanForCloud provides users a forward-looking view of costs and perfectly complements our existing cost reporting and tracking features in the RightScale Cloud Management Platform," added Crandell. "The combination will allow businesses to manage their current and past cloud spending as well as their future cloud budgets."

PlanForCloud was known as ShopForCloud, a Scotland-based venture acquired by RightScale. Its users can forecast costs on any supported cloud, save the forecasts, and later update them as cloud prices fluctuate. PlanForCloud automatically performs a simulation on planned deployments and generates detailed 3-year reports that enable companies to accurately budget for future usage.

"When we launched PlanForCloud, it was clear businesses needed tools to help forecast their cloud costs across the constantly expanding list of cloud providers," said Ali Khajeh-Hosseini, co-founder of PlanForCloud. "As cloud usage grows and becomes a larger part of corporate IT budgets, our service provides the tools businesses need to improve the visibility and predictability of their cloud computing initiatives."