The low down on the latest AWS Financial Management updates

It’s vitally important to keep on top of AWS billing and financial management services in order to make sure you’re always getting the best value for money out of your cloud spend. It can be all too easy to accidentally rack up a large cloud bill, but by making the most of the tools available and staying up to date with changes, you can keep control of, and get maximum value from, your cloud send.

Since the start of 2023, AWS has made some changes to help make it easier to keep your cloud costs down. From adapting the requirements to use their compute optimiser to helping make Cost Anomaly Detection easier to use, AWS has made a suite of great updates to their financial management tooling! 

So, here’s what you need to know:

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection is now auto-configured for new AWS Cost Explorer Users: 

These changes mean making the most of Cost Anomaly Detection (CAD) is simpler, and it has an easier set-up! Now, new users will be automatically configured with a daily alert summary email so you don’t have to tackle a steep learning curve to access vital reporting. 

Deprecation of the Simple Monthly Calculator

AWS has made it easier to explore the pricing of AWS services and estimate the cost of your architectural needs in one place with the AWS Pricing Calculator. If you have previously created cost estimates in the old Simple Monthly Calculator, AWS has helpfully launched a conversion tool so you can generate a new AWS Pricing Calculator URL and not lose your previous estimates. This feature will be closed off at the end of the year, so make sure you plan to move across to the AWS Pricing Calculator before 2024!

AWS Billing Conductor (ABC) announces new SKU pricing rules and pricing update

With the launch of SKU pricing rules within AWS Billing Conductor, you can now create a pricing rule unique to an AWS resource and be more granular when you apply markups and discounts!  ABC has also updated its pricing model to a tiered, account-based structure, which went into effect on June 1, 2023! 

AWS Compute Optimizer updates the requirements for historical data 

Compute Optimizer offers resource optimisation for several services: Amazon EC2 instance types, EBS volumes, Lambda functions and more, and recommendations are provided based on your historical usage. Previous requirements have been changed, for example, where you previously had to have 30 consecutive hours of utilisation data, now as long as there is a cumulative 30 hours of utilisation data in the past 14 days, or 93 days (for enhanced infrastructure metrics), ACO will generate rightsizing recommendations for supported EC2 instance types! 

Keep on top of your cloud spending with our cloud cost optimisation services: 

Cloud financial management isn’t always an easy thing to get your head around, and bill shock is more common than you’d think!

But, thanks to years of experience, our Finops Certified consultants are on hand to help suggest a range of things you can do to cut your cloud spending, and to help you get the most out of the money you do spend. 

In the past, we’ve helped a major UK Insurer to save $200k on their cloud bill and have reduced a SaaS provider's AWS bill by 24%! Get in touch with us and see how much you can save on your cloud costs: