Cloud computing empowers organizations to access IT resources on-demand, over the internet, and on a pay-per-use basis. Thus, your company does not need to purchase, install, operate, and upgrade hardware for physical data centers. Instead, you can rent resources as needed from cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). For instance, AWS provides compute, storage, database, networking, machine learning, data lake and analytics, security, and IoT resources/services.

AWS cost monitoring tools enable you to track your resource consumption and costs associated with running operations on the AWS platform. These tools vary in capabilities, but they typically offer customizable reporting, dashboarding, data analytics, built-in automation, and cost alerting.

When I co-founded CloudZero, I set out to change the way the world thinks about cloud cost optimization and management. For too long, I had watched cloud cost optimization vendors neglect to help companies build better, more cost-effective software. Instead, everything focused on buying better, by optimizing prices and discounts.

While Financial Operations (FinOps) isn’t a new concept, it is becoming more prevalent in companies that have started seeing increases in their cloud spend. Historically, when engineers needed to set up infrastructure to complete a project, they had to go through a long process of procuring servers, finding space in a data center, and getting financial approval. This process could take two months or more, so it allowed plenty of time for oversight by the financial department.

Businesses both small and large use cloud services to help maintain their data. But managing cloud services — and making sure you stay within your budget — can be a challenge. To maximize your money, you need to focus on one thing: efficiency. If you can be efficient with your time and finances, getting your cloud services up and running will be a breeze.

Cloud costs are a daily concern for companies running applications on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This makes sense because many organizations struggle with unexpected AWS charges. Although many organizations have a cloud budget in place, accurately controlling costs is difficult. Real-time cost remediation is often difficult for many, leading to inflated AWS costs every billing cycle. No matter where you are on your cloud journey, reducing AWS costs is something you’ll want to do continuously.

When your organization uses the cutting edge of technology to function, you may feel like it takes all your time and energy to stay on top of emerging trends. How are you supposed to anticipate what the future will hold when you have to balance those considerations with how to best provide for your customers’ needs today? It’s okay if you don’t have your finger on the pulse 100 percent of the time.

For SaaS companies, the cloud plays a significant role in product creation and delivery. As one of the top drivers of COGS, cloud costs have a major impact on key financial metrics and can dramatically impact revenue and valuation. However, that creates a scenario ripe for conflict: Engineers make important decisions about features and functionality without clear insight into how those decisions will impact spending—and finance continuously gets surprised by seemingly exorbitant cloud bills.

While modernizing IT infrastructure, securing data, and ensuring high availability are high priorities, optimizing AWS costs and utilization has consistently been the top priority for most companies in recent years. As a result, AWS introduced Cost and Usage Reports (CUR). AWS designed CUR to provide granular data on resource consumption and associated costs in the AWS environment.

Investors have fallen back in love with profitability. This followed an almost two decade love affair with top-line revenue growth. The growth-at-all-costs paradigm enabled what I call cost-agnostic innovation: If it brings in more customers and revenue, build it — no matter how much it costs. When cash is abundant, investors can afford long-term risk, and cost-agnostic innovation works.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers Cost Categories and tagging to help its customers track cloud usage and associated costs. But AWS customers still struggled to connect cloud costs with the products or people who build them despite endless tagging and defining Cost Categories. So, AWS announced Split Charges. This post walks you through what AWS Split Charges are, how they're configured, and how Split Charge rules work.