Category: Best Practices

We have further enhanced our forecasting algorithm to allow a same day start date so customers can always access and view their historical and predicted costs in their Cost Management console and via Cost Explorer API without any gaps. Prior to this change, the current date was an invalid start date for calls to GetCostForecast […]

Collecting and analyzing data is critical to gaining valuable insights into your business and evaluating the effectiveness of your processes. Similar to how you measure your organizational activities, it is important to measure your AWS cost and usage efficiency metrics. This blog post introduces 5 key cost management metrics that you can use to help […]

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world” – Archimedes. 451 Research’s recent whitepaper “Cloud Financial Management, Small Changes Can Make Big Impacts” (April 2020) highlights how organizations who are able to embrace the CFM lever correctly are able to accelerate both top […]

AWS is unlike any other place I’ve ever worked. I’m not just saying this just because my 10-month-old Samoyed puppy is snoozing at my feet as I write this from my daily 20th floor downtown Seattle perch or because an engineer just stopped by with a spare General Porpoise donut for me that survived standup […]

Some of you have reached out asking to learn more about purchasing and managing Savings Plans. The inimitable Jeff Barr already covered most of the need-to-know content in this post (which you should absolutely read right now if you haven’t), but here’s how the brave new world of Savings Plans fits into the AWS Cost […]

Managing your AWS costs and usage doesn’t have to be difficult. The AWS Billing Console is your one-stop-shop for accessing your billing, payments, and cost management information and capabilities. During this post, I will cover how you can use the Billing Console as your hub for managing your billing, payments, and cost management workflows. Getting […]

In the cloud world, cost management is quickly becoming an aspect of everyone’s job. AWS Budgets lets you set custom budgets that alert you when you exceed (or are forecasted to exceed) the thresholds that you set. In this post, we be covering how you can use AWS Budgets to set a custom cost budget […]

A chill is in the air, the holiday season is approaching, and some of you are using AWS for the first time. Whether you’re a student or a researcher or even a newly-minted software engineer, here are some helpful tips for keeping tabs on your costs as you build out your next big idea (or […]

Over the course of my time here at AWS, I have yet to meet two companies who structure their financial processes in the same way. For this reason, AWS provides several cost datasets tailored to help you better understand your AWS usage, allowing you to account for the unique way that you run your business. […]

When it comes to operating in the cloud, it’s always best to have more information than you need. Last time I covered how anyone can get started slicing and dicing AWS cost and usage information using AWS Cost Explorer, but what happens when you need to dive even deeper into your cost and usage data? […]