Currently, I am a Finance Consultant. My organization uses Cost Explorer and Compute Optimizer from AWS Cost Management.
Our primary use case for the solution includes a review of monthly bills to ensure they are compliant with the budget that has been set.
We also look for opportunities to optimize by breaking down the costs into different services, applications, teams, and projects.
From here, we create dashboards for the leadership team to review.
AWS Cost Management is good for providing in-depth information in one place. The reports are good, particularly the CSV file, which is the master file. It has all the information you would need to do any analysis. Most of the analysis is done using one of the other services from AWS Cost Explorer.
The solution is easy to use and easy to access any information that someone may be interested in, such as understanding why a particular cost is high.
I would like to see the forecasting models improved with AWS Cost Management. There is too much of a gap between what AWS forecasts and the actual bills we are charged. It is a machine learning system and relies on more data being collected over time. However, so far, we have not seen that.
I have been working with AWS Cost Management for four years.
This is a stable solution. This can depend on the cloud management tool or other third-party tools. Sometimes there is a lag of a few hours for the data to populate into the CMP tool. But the costs in Cost Explorer are in real-time.
AWS Cost Management is scalable.
When I used technical support, I found that they require a bit of time, particularly when it is a problem with a report or if we need an explanation of the cost that has been charged by AWS.
I worked with CloudChekr and other native cost management tools like Azure Cost Management and Computer Optimizer, and Cost Explorer.
The initial setup of AWS Cost Management is straightforward, it is not complex.
The implementation and data integration with AWS takes time to get all the information set up in the tool. It can take up to two weeks. We had three people deploy and maintain the solution.
We get AWS Cost Management for free because we use AWS services.
If you are just venturing into cost management, I believe this is the best solution to start with. I rate AWS Cost Management a nine out 10 overall.
