Getting Started with AWS Cloud Financial Management

As AWS continues rapid growth as the dominant cloud computing platform, enterprises are struggling to gain financial visibility and control over expansive cloud environments and spending distributed across multiple accounts and regions. It’s easy to be surprised by high monthly bills without reasonable insights into usage and cost trends.

Addressing this common pain point, AWS recently announced Cloud Financial Management to help organizations better manage cloud finances. Now in preview, this fully-managed service provides real-time analytics, customizable reporting, budget alerts, recommendations, and more to optimize AWS cloud investments.

If bringing order to cloud finances sounds appealing, getting started with Cloud Financial Management is straightforward. Here are key steps for initial onboarding:

Enable Access and Link AWS Accounts

First, navigate to Cloud Financial Management in the AWS management console to activate the service. Next you’ll link AWS accounts and organizational units to aggregate financial data. Best practice is to register payer accounts first with additional resource accounts connected later.

Define Cost Allocation Logic

With raw cost data ingesting from linked accounts, next allocate expenses. Select allocation dimensions like service, resource tag, Availability Zone or more. This step assigns costs to different dimensions so expenses can be analyzed from required viewpoints. Use existing rules from AWS Cost Explorer or define new allocations.

Activate Budget Alerts

A key benefit of Cloud Financial Management is proactive budget alerts when spend crosses thresholds. Set alerts on cost or usage metrics like estimated charges, month-to-date spend, resource utilization, and more. Align alerts to you cloud billing cadence.

Explore Interactive Dashboards

With the foundation established, interact with Cloud Financial Management’s centralized dashboard highlighting spend by service, trends over time, usage vs budgets, highest cost resources, and savings opportunities. Drill into reports to further slice usage details by resource attributes, get forecasted spend, view actual costs vs budgets, and find areas for optimization.

Dive into Recommendations

Finally, review right-sizing and purchasing recommendations surfaced through ML-analysis of usage data. Identify idle and overprovisioned resources to eliminate as well as Reserved Instance and Savings Plan purchase options. This guidance translates insights into tangible savings actions.

Now You’re Off and Running!

In less than an hour after launch, Cloud Financial Management can start unlocking transparency into cloud costs and providing guidance to operate cloud responsibly. The capabilities perfectly complement existing AWS cost tools like AWS Cost Explorer while providing higher-level financial intelligence tailored for executives and finance teams.

If your business needs to get a handle on expanding cloud expenses, Cloud Financial Management delivers the visibility, controls, and direction to confidently optimize cloud investments. Sign-up for the preview and see how it can help manage cloud finances today!