AWS Cloud Financial Management

Starting today, you can create exports of your AWS cost and usage data with the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS) 1.0 schema as a preview feature. For those of you who aren’t yet familiar with the FOCUS standard, FOCUS is a new open-source cloud billing data specification that provides consistency and standardization to simplify cloud cost reporting and analysis across multiple sources. With Data Exports for FOCUS 1.0 (preview), you can configure recurring delivery of your AWS cost and usage data with the FOCUS 1.0 schema to your designated Amazon S3 bucket, and use these exports for your desired FinOps activities, such as cost reporting and allocation.

We’re excited to announce that starting today AWS Billing and Cost Management provides Data Exports for Cost Optimization Hub. With Data Exports for Cost Optimization Hub, you can deliver consolidated cost optimization recommendations in CSV or parquet format to Amazon S3 on a recurring basis. You can define what data you want to include in the export using basic SQL query or column/row filters in the console. You can share exports with stakeholders, load them into your BI dashboards, or add to your Cloud Financial Management data lake.

Starting today, AWS Compute Optimizer delivers new recommendations for Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. These recommendations help you detect idle RDS instances and identify the optimal instance types and provisioned IOPS settings for your existing RDS DB instances, so you can reduce costs for idle and over-provisioned RDS DB instances or increase the performance of under-provisioned workloads.

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection uses advanced Machine Learning to identify anomalous spends and generate timely alerts, empowering our customers to take quick action. To assign, track, and manage the efforts, teams following the IT Service Management (ITSM) framework may need duly assigned incident tickets. In the era of agile practices, ITSM processes have evolved into […]

AWS publishes more than 200 announcements per month to the “What’s New with AWS” website and RSS feed, so there’s a lot to get excited about. However, finding relevant announcements in these updates can be a challenge for engineers, finance professionals, or FinOps stakeholders. In this blog, we will deploy a solution to collect cost optimization related announcements from the “What’s New with AWS” feed and pass them into a dedicated Slack channel.

We’re excited to announce granular cost visibility for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) in the AWS Cost and Usage Reports (CUR), enabling you to analyze, optimize, and chargeback cost and usage for your Kubernetes applications. With AWS Split Cost Allocation Data for Amazon EKS, customers can now allocate application costs to individual business units […]

In September 2023, we announced Amazon RDS Extended Support which is now available for specific engine versions of Amazon Aurora MySQL, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon RDS for MySQL, and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL. Today, we take you through the calculations for estimating your company’s spend on Amazon RDS Extended Support. We share prescriptive guidance to very quickly engage with your engineering teams.

Executive sponsors play a pivotal role in ensuring the success and effectiveness of a FinOps practice. In this blog, we outline a framework for your organization to gain executive sponsorship.

AWS Cloud Financial Management Technical Implementation Playbooks (CFM TIPs) – The complete playbook for implementing and improving effective Cloud Financial Management capabilities in your organization. Utilizing the Cloud Financial Management framework and the Cost Optimization pillar in the AWS Well-Architected Framework, we have built an accessible step-by-step playbook to help you to implement a specific set of capabilities in your organization. This results in mechanisms that ensure ongoing, self-sufficient cost optimization and governance.

Given cloud invoice timing and the corporate closing calendar, variances between the AWS CUR and the GL are common for many companies. Our recommendation is to document your financial closing process, and educate leadership on any identified variance drivers. Calculating the variance percentage between the finalized AWS CUR and your GL entry to use as a talking point can also enhance understanding of the financial process.