In a recent article published by Economic Times on Dec 29, 2023, titled "Banks Told to Explore Dashboard with Real-Time Info on Services," the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has urged banks to embrace real-time transparency through the creation of an online dashboard. Anodot, a leader in business monitoring, is at the forefront of transforming the banking sector with its advanced real-time business monitoring dashboard designed for internal usage within banks. [embed]https://youtu.be/hRM_yX9zu1I[/embed] What does this mean? It means it's high time for banks to embrace the significance of real-time actions, and dashboards (like Anodot) can be here to lend a hand.   Why Anodot's Real-Time Monitoring is the Best for Banking Excellence As banks grapple with technical glitches causing service disruptions, Anodot offers a robust solution—an advanced real-time monitoring dashboard designed for internal use. This dashboard empowers banks to proactively identify issues that could affect security, revenue, or customer experience, ensuring a seamless and secure banking environment. Immediate Benefits for Banks with Anodot features Anodot's real-time monitoring dashboard provides banks with unparalleled capabilities to: Optimize Revenue Streams: Immediately Identify anomalies impacting revenue streams, allowing swift corrective action to be taken. Enhance Security: Detect potential security threats in real-time, safeguarding sensitive information and customer data. Improve Customer Experience: Proactively address issues that could impact customer experience, ensuring satisfaction and loyalty.   Banks, facing penalties for service disruptions now have an opportunity to elevate their monitoring capabilities with Anodot's solution. By integrating Anodot's real-time dashboard into their operations, banks can move beyond reactive measures and adopt a proactive stance, identifying and resolving issues before they escalate. Insights for Retail Investors For investors in bank stocks, Anodot's real-time dashboard underscores the importance of technology in mitigating risks. It highlights the potential for banks to invest in advanced business monitoring solutions, enhancing their resilience and market standing. Impact on Industries: Opportunities with Anodot Anodot's real-time monitoring dashboard has far-reaching effects on various industries: Fintech Software: Integrating Anodot's solution becomes pivotal for offering robust and secure financial services. IT Services & Infrastructure: Anodot's advanced monitoring drives demand for modernization and proactive issue resolution. Telecom: Ensuring connectivity for seamless banking services gains prominence with Anodot's real-time insights. AdTech and Gaming: Anodot's success in AdTech and Gaming showcases the adaptability of its monitoring solutions, providing insights and trust in dynamic and high-transaction-volume environments.   Anodot's Exceptional Pedigree in Real-time Monitoring Excellence Long-Term Structural Improvements Anodot has over ten years of experience providing real-time monitoring that can lead to valuable insights. Resilient Infrastructure: Banks undergo a structural overhaul, enhancing their technology foundations for peak capacity, security, and process complexity. Responsible Innovation: The rollout of new features prioritizes stability, aligning innovation with execution capability. Level Playing Field: Uniform visibility enables objective comparisons, preventing weak IT budgets from hiding behind marketing claims. Business Continuity: Standardized redundancies, instant failovers, and geographic contingencies minimize the impact of outages. Trust Building: Reliable functionality establishes credibility, driving financial inclusion and a more inclusive banking experience. However, balancing transparency responsibly is crucial to avoid trivializing customer complaints without appreciating the scale of difficulties involved. Short-Term Positives: Immediate Benefits and Scrutiny with Anodot In the short term, Anodot's real-time monitoring dashboard offers: Granular Insights: Instant visibility enables proactive issue resolution, ensuring a secure and seamless banking experience. Optimized Operations: Swift corrective actions based on Anodot's insights result in revenue optimization and enhanced customer satisfaction. Vendor Accountability: Clear visibility into recurring issues allows banks to hold third-party vendors accountable, ensuring robust partnerships. Leadership Motivation: Public metrics serve as a performance indicator, motivating urgency in stabilizing systems. The extent of progress depends on the successful integration of Anodot's real-time dashboard across banks and effective communication within the industry. Companies Impacted with Anodot The adoption of Anodot's real-time monitoring dashboard has different implications for various companies, including Companies Gaining with Anodot: Fintech Companies with Real-time Data Analytics Solutions powered by Anodot Digital Payment Infrastructure Providers benefitting from Anodot's reliability insights Banks with Robust Digital Infrastructure leveraging Anodot's predictive analytics IT Consulting and System Integration Firms with expertise in Anodot-powered solutions Anodot collects and analyzes data across the entire payment stack and ecosystem. All metrics are monitored at scale, enabling operators to achieve complete visibility over the payments environment. Anodot’s patented correlation engine correlates anomalies across the business for holistic root cause analysis and the fastest time to resolution, leading to significantly improved approval rate, performance, availability, and customer experience.   Banking Excellence is Possible with Anodot as a Partner As the Economic Times highlights the RBI's push for real-time transparency, Anodot is here to equip banks with advanced monitoring capabilities. With its powerful dashboard, Anodot is a game-changer for banks looking to thrive in the digital age by boosting revenue, enhancing security, and improving customer experience. And it's not just limited to banking—Anodot's adaptability spans industries like fintech and telecom, backed by a decade of specialized experience. By integrating these real-time insights, banks protect their operations and foster trust and loyalty among customers, gaining a competitive edge. The message is crystal clear: embracing proactive, real-time monitoring with Anodot isn't just about avoiding penalties or disruptions—it's about seizing an opportunity for transformation and delivering excellent service.   Discover how Anodot can enhance your financial business with flawless customer experience, payment optimization, and operational excellence. Let's talk.   

Your FinOps foundations are down in your company's cloud (woohoo!), but what comes next? How can you boost your MVP success in the cloud with your FinOps strategy? In this blog post, we'll briefly dive into the three phases of your FinOps for top-notch implementation from beginning to end. Need a refresher on setting up an MVP FinOps framework for your cloud? In part 1 of our series, we'll show you how it's done! For deeper insights into the FinOps lifecycle phases, part 2 of our series is now available! Recap: Establishing strong foundations in each FinOps phase with Anodot’s model Before we dive deep into the details of maximizing your FinOps lifecycle, here's some basic info to catch you up! The MVP FinOps approach focuses on three key components: people, processes, and tools. MVP FinOps team (people) This MVP approach starts small with a cross-functional team, gradually building the FinOps practice by addressing specific challenges. Key elements include identifying an organizational home, assembling the right team members, and engaging stakeholders for initial success. MVP operating model (processes) This MVP FinOps approach prioritizes critical capabilities for building an early-stage FinOps practice. This includes visibility, cost allocation, and tagging strategy for accountability. Other aspects like cloud usage optimization or chargeback & finance integration can be addressed later. Simplify and enhance agility through the inform, optimize, and operate lifecycle phases. MVP KPIs (tools) This MVP approach simplifies the measurement of FinOps efficiency by focusing on key metrics. This allows for an assessment of the current impact of FinOps efforts and immediate insights. Initial KPIs for measuring FinOps efficiency and tooling considerations will be discussed. Now that the FinOps MVP for the cloud has been simplified, one can delve deeper into maximizing the benefits of each lifecycle phase (inform, optimize, and operate). The Inform phase What is the Inform phase in the FinOps lifecycle? The goal is to ensure everyone understands the financial impact of their decisions and can make informed choices. This phase involves regular updates, reports, discussions, decision-making meetings, and setting budgets and forecasts based on gathered information. Develop a strategy using tags or hierarchies to improve visibility and create a detailed data set. Establish a showback model for better accountability, providing reports highlighting cost drivers and irregularities. Collaborate with the finance team to create a rolling forecast model accommodating seasonal variations and data anomalies. Next iterations of the Inform phase Evaluate your cost allocation strategy To effectively manage costs in the cloud, allocating as much of your spending as possible is important. This involves understanding how you use cloud services, assigning costs to the right owners, and creating accurate budgets and forecasts. However, many organizations struggle with mapping data to financial reports and ensuring compliance with tagging.  As businesses and cloud usage grow, allocating shared costs and maintaining tagging compliance becomes even more challenging. By using automated tagging enforcement and retroactive spend tagging, these issues can be addressed. Validate your forecasts Accurate cloud spending forecasting is important for FinOps teams to make informed decisions. We here at Anodot use a simplified metrics strategy that includes a Forecast Accuracy KPI to measure the difference between forecasted and actual costs. Our goal is to keep this difference under 20%. Consider FinOps solutions with ML-based automated forecasting capabilities if accurate forecasts are challenging. Once accurate rolling forecasts are achieved, new budgeting initiatives can be implemented based on forecasts.  Regularly communicating these initiatives to engineering teams is important while balancing budget adherence with other business objectives. Tackling Kubernetes code allocation Managing costs and allocating resources in containerized environments can be difficult. To optimize resource usage in Kubernetes, organizing resources by application, assigning namespaces and labels, and using consistent resource tagging are important.  Share cost and usage information with relevant teams and stakeholders and regularly review dashboards to promote cost optimizations. Additionally, consider utilizing third-party FinOps solutions to provide enhanced visibility and forecasting for Kubernetes, ultimately driving return on investment (ROI). Looking for data visualizations and a more in-depth exploration of the Inform phase? Check out the guide! The Optimize phase What is the Optimize phase in the FinOps lifecycle? In the optimize phase, the aim is to identify opportunities for more effective spending rather than just reducing costs. In the initial iteration, the focus was on: Exploring rate optimization opportunities Disregarding active usage optimization by the engineering team Implementing anomaly detection mechanisms to identify irregular cloud spend and usage Next iterations of the Optimize phase Increased emphasis on rate optimization The process of seeking commitment purchase opportunities must be standardized to optimize rates. By understanding each program and measuring performance, it is possible to define purchasing strategies and maximize savings.  To minimize waste and costs, commitment utilization and on-demand coverage will also be evaluated. These key performance indicators ensure effective coverage and utilization, leading to financial success in the cloud. Reduce cloud waste through active optimization Cloud providers charge for unused services, leading to overprovisioned and orphaned organization resources. Decentralized optimization by teams can help reduce cloud waste, but active engagement and data-supported recommendations are needed.  Implementing an LPI called Percentage of Waste, based on open savings opportunities, enables the optimization of cloud billing. Daily/weekly/monthly scans identify usage reduction options. Improve time to address cost anomalies Cloud cost anomalies refer to unexpected increases in cloud spending compared to historical patterns. Identifying these anomalies in real-time poses challenges for FinOps teams, often leading to delays in resolution. The goal is to optimize the anomaly management process to resolve issues within 24 hours.  This process involves three phases: time to detection, time to root cause, and time to resolution. By implementing automated workflows and leveraging solutions like Anodot, FinOps teams can react quickly with contextual alerts to address cost anomalies promptly. Looking for data visualizations and a more in-depth exploration of the Optimize phase? Check out the guide! The Operate phase What is the Operate phase in the FinOps lifecycle? In the Operate phase, processes are built, and strategies are implemented to achieve FinOps goals. In the first iteration of this phase, the following was done: Embedded FinOps in the organization Made decisions on whether to act on rate and usage optimization Onboarded our early adopters Implemented basic mechanisms for anomaly detection Implemented simplified KPIs strategy Evaluated native and third-party FinOps tools What is the Operate phase in the FinOps lifecycle? Onboard additional engineering teams In the first iteration, early adopters were onboarded for the FinOps implementation. Now, additional engineering teams who have already been identified are ready to be onboarded. The basic concepts of FinOps will be introduced, and regular showback reporting will be implemented to highlight cost drivers and anomalies.  Through iterative integration, a partnership that aligns with them early in development will be built, avoiding wasted effort and frustration. Implement budgeting initiatives Accurate forecasting enables the implementation of new initiatives like budget management for teams. Budgets play a crucial role in project approval in large companies and can be utilized by FinOps for cost optimization. Showback reports should link costs to actual and forecasted spending, highlighting variances and comparisons to budgeted costs.  Furthermore, FinOps teams should guide engineering teams in making tradeoffs between budget adherence and other business objectives. Execute your commitment purchasing strategy In the optimize v2 phase, a commitment-based discount strategy was introduced. To implement it effectively, follow these steps: set a purchasing cadence, start with small initial purchases, allocate commitment costs wisely, and continuously measure and iterate. As you gain experience and confidence, increase your purchase frequency and size. Use FinOps tools for improved reliability and consistency Consider opting for a third-party SaaS solution instead of building your own automation. These solutions, particularly FinOps platforms, combine automation and FinOps best practices to accelerate your progress through the FinOps lifecycle. They offer normalized billing data, automated calculations, cost allocation tools, pre-built showback reports, advanced forecasting, budgeting capabilities, anomaly detection, and optimization recommendations. Looking for data visualizations and a more in-depth exploration of the Operate phase? Check out the guide! The best things come in three It's crazy that 70% of companies go over their cloud budgets. That's why adopting a FinOps MVP approach can help improve efficiency and reduce cloud costs. That's why we're here to help you save. With Anodot, not only can anyone discover ways to cut down on cloud expenses with advanced recommendations, but you can also get educational resources like our MVP series to start implementing your FinOps successes ASAP. Get the entire series here! Adopting a FinOps MVP Approach: The FinOps MVP Adopting a FinOps MVP Approach: Maturing Your MVP FinOps Practice   

Did you miss our latest roundtable on AI-driven FinOps? Don’t worry, we got you! In this recap, we'll review what our FinOps experts discussed and the key takeaways from the roundtable discussion. The challenges of delivering successful FinOps Managing DevOps teams and cloud billing in government environments. The future of FinOps  The role of automation, predictive analytics, and AI Not much of a reader? Watch it on demand! Who's in our roundtable?   Sean Donaldson, CTO of Protera: Sean is an experienced technology professional who has served as the CTO for Proterra for 25 years. With a focus on AWS and Azure, Sean excels in handling critical workloads and ensuring efficient cost management.    Corné van der Vaart, Technical Cloud Project Manager of A.C.A. Group: A.C.A. primarily focuses on software development for public and private sector companies. They also work with various cloud environments, following the MSP approach. Recently, they made significant investments in our Finops offering to meet market demand.   Nir Raz, Cloud FinOps Director of Nice: Nir is a cloud FinOps director with a diverse background in the field and has played a key role in growing the Cloud FinOps Group. While working across various business units with complex workloads, Neil has worked on-prem and cloud-native solutions on platforms like AWS and Azure. His expertise lies in financial aspects, such as predicting cloud costs and budgeting, while developing internal BI tools and advanced KPI dashboards.    Inbal Tadeski, a Data Scientist at Anodot: Inbal leads a team responsible for building sophisticated analysis tools to extract valuable insights from cost data. Her work includes anomaly detection, forecasting, and smart recommendations to help users reduce costs. Oh, and not to brag, but she was our innovative project CostGPT, which lets users explore cost data using natural language effortlessly.    Ran Blumenfeld, FinOps & Customer Success at TeraSky: An experienced leader in FinOps for over two decades, excelling in the public Cloud industry with a strong background in customer success and product management.   Melissa Abecasis, Presenter and Customer Success Director at Anodot: Melissa has expertly managed cloud costs for eight years, preserving trust while taming expenses. Melissa helps MSPs scale using Anodot and is an amazing roundtable host!   The challenges of delivering successful Finops In this section, we explored the traditional practices of businesses before transitioning to the cloud and the challenges of adopting this new model. The past Organizations invested heavily and expected long-lasting results, disregarding dynamic cost management in IT resources. Budget planning sessions were the norm. However, the shift to public cloud platforms like AWS or Azure is changing the game. Today’s challenges Setting up a server in AWS or Azure may seem simple, but the real challenge lies in architecting it right. This includes severe complexities like Proper security Seamless compliance Governance Backups Discover recovery    [caption id="attachment_15165" align="alignnone" width="624"] Anomaly detection on cloud costs[/caption] [caption id="attachment_15166" align="alignnone" width="624"] Spike on cloud costs - anomaly detection[/caption] Optimizing cost management Cloud cost management poses challenges due to various approaches and strategies. Finding the intersection between security architecture, cost governance, and business objectives drives the need for a FinOps organization. “It's not just a matter of numbers; it requires an artful approach to find that perfect equilibrium.” - Sean Donaldson Challenges in Dealing with DevOps Teams  We asked our expert, Nir, who has successfully set up a FinOps team at his company, about the main challenges when dealing with DevOps teams. It’s a roller coaster ride Defining waste reduction approaches, modernization, and architectural improvements is easy. The challenge lies in ensuring the availability of development and DevOps teams when needed. The problem with being dependent on the availability and coordination of the teams To avoid big cost setbacks in the cloud, it's crucial to spot anomalies in time. As Nir mentioned, a single query that generates too many logs can seriously mess up operations. Manual FinOps falls short in today's world. A cost management solution can address this issue through automation, identifying key factors for quantifiable action.   [caption id="attachment_15167" align="alignnone" width="624"] Anodot's cloud cost management tool[/caption]   Cloud Billing in Government Environments Corné's company, A.C.A. Group, serves a primarily government consumer base and mentions that many of them find cloud billing challenging, and many don’t want to embrace FinOps. "We regularly meet with clients to discuss their cloud bills and any potential spikes. However, where we are based in Belgium, Finops is not widely recognized by many companies or governmental departments. It's challenging to explain how improvements can lead to cost reductions or alternative options." -Corné van der Vaart   True cost optimization requires architectural changes One major issue that Corné sees in this sector is that cost optimization isn't a priority. It often gets overlooked until problems start popping up. So, their customers assume that the architectural design already considers financial optimization when they renew the project.  🚨 Alarming stat🚨: Corné says about 90% of clients are skeptical of making changes for cost savings alone. The future of Finops Now that the challenges have been discussed, let's dive into how modern FinOps can help control and optimize costs in the cloud. Leveraging  AI-driven methods and machine learning As we've seen, manual methods don't do the trick when dealing with real-time anomalies. As our Data Scientist, Inbal relayed: “We need to alert users correctly, avoiding false positives while ensuring important events are not missed. We aim to automatically alert and help users explore anomalies, identifying the root cause.” Machine learning solutions To speed up cloud operations with a FinOps perspective, machine learning, and generative AI will have a major role in comprehending data clearly and insightfully. Hint: Our Cost GPT tool allows customers to explore data using natural language. It's simple, intuitive, and all in one place.  Inbal discussed how predictive analytics and forecasting can amp up your FinOps game. “Forecasting helps with planning and budgeting, giving you confidence in your decisions. We are also working on focused-based recommendations, such as suggesting saving plans based on your current usage.” -Inbal Tadeski   By leveraging AI and machine learning, proactive analytics can provide alerts and advance warnings about exceeding budgets and guidance on saving money. This combination of intelligent capabilities can deliver significant value to customers.   Upcoming Anodot’s goals The perk of having Anodot’s chief scientist on the roundtable is getting an inside look at what the company prioritizes for the future! This includes: Utilizing predictive analytics: cost-saving suggestions can be made, including recommending a more suitable savings plan and anticipating potential cost reductions. Advance alerts budget overruns: We aim to bring great value to customers by using AI and machine learning to manage costs proactively.   AI predictive models and the role of the FinOps engineer  With all the exciting advancements that AI and automation bring, we can expect great efficiency in cloud costs. But what about the human role in these operations?  Inbal acknowledges the power of these tools, but full automation will take time.   “This process should be a learnable loop. We're not currently trying to perform actions on your behalf. In the future, we might let customers add resolutions and actions they're sure of in certain cases.” -Inbal Tadeski Balancing human knowledge with AI  Our experts believe that AI will improve by making recommendations and predictions. This will allow us to focus more on reducing cloud waste and finding ways to modernize and plan commitments. Balancing human knowledge with AI    Cloud architects are hesitant to adopt new tools or use advanced AI, thinking they can handle it themselves. But having them figure out costs is a waste of resources. Your cloud architect or the FinOps engineer should not be trying to determine how much their GP three costs.    The FinOps engineer and the AI rely on each other. AI assists the FinOps role, but customization and supervision require a human touch.   Sean mentions the importance of keeping analytics and AI in constant interaction.   “FinOps analysts play a crucial role at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and human intelligence. While AI enhances their effectiveness, human involvement remains essential.” -Sean Donaldson Final thoughts  To truly grasp the ins and outs of FinOps, the challenges, and the opportunities, it's best to hear from the experts themselves. They can share their knowledge and opinions based on what they've experienced in their field. Our goal was to bring together this roundtable so there could be a candid discussion on what they see and expect in AI-driven FinOps. The biggest win: Seeing companies update and create new features to enhance their client's cloud efficiency while saving time and money. (Check out our CostGPT!) The biggest struggle: Getting clients to see the importance of cost optimization in the cloud and being proactive about it.  Have further questions about your FinOps journey or how AI-driven insights can help? Get in touch!   

Upcoming specific new AWS regulations will significantly impact how businesses handle their AWS operations. Starting from January 15, 2024, AWS will no longer permit the resale of discounted Reserved Instances (RIs) bought from the Amazon EC2 Reserved Instance Marketplace. This update aligns with AWS's service terms, particularly Section 5.5, which explicitly prohibits the resale of discounted RIs. What implications can AWS customers expect, and how can Anodot help with solutions to this new change? Let's dive deeper and find out. What are Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances? Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances offer a cost-effective solution for businesses to save money in the cloud. Typically, when businesses utilize Amazon's cloud for programs and data storage, they are charged based on usage. But if you know you'll need that computer power for a while, you can opt to "reserve" it. This means you can use a specific amount of Amazon's computer power for a set period (1 or 3 years), and in return, Amazon gives you a discount. Current policy allowing the resale of Reserved Instances in the marketplace The current policy allows Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers to resell their RIs in the Reserved Instance virtual Marketplace without restrictions. Changes in the New AWS Policy Update In the past few weeks, specific customer types have been informed that starting January 2024, they will be unable to sell Standard RIs on the marketplace. These customers can sell their RIs until the end of December 2024. Who does this rule apply to? It applies to customers who have qualified for the following discount programs. Because they are receiving a discount on consumption (including RI purchases), AWS does not allow RIs to be sold on the marketplace. You’ll be affected if any of the following criteria apply to you: RI Volume Discounts When the value of RI purchases reaches $500k per year, customers are eligible for an RI Volume discount of 5% on any future RI purchase. This discount increases to 10% when the value of all purchases reaches $1m per year. Enterprise Discount Program (EDP) Customers under an Enterprise Discount Program have committed to a specific yearly spend and receive a flat discount on their usage for most services, including RI purchases). Specific Customers Members of the Solution Provider Program, APN partners, and MSPs who receive a discount on consumption from AWS. How the new policy change impacts AWS customers Previously, AWS customers could sell unused Standard RIs or buy Standard RIs from others. However, the new policy update will prohibit the resale of Discounted RIs. According to the update, customers retain ownership of the RIs until expiration. Potential repercussions include: Reduced Flexibility: Customers who don't need the full reservation term cannot recoup the funds spent on those RIs. This could make RIs less appealing to some users, especially those uncertain about long-term computing needs. Decision Making: Customers may need to be more cautious and precise in purchasing RIs, understanding that they're making a more binding commitment without the fallback option of reselling. Potential Shift to Savings Plans: As a response, businesses might gravitate more towards AWS Savings Plans, which offer similar cost-saving benefits but with greater flexibility. (Which we'll cover in the next section.) What are AWS Savings Plans? AWS Savings Plans offer discounted prices on AWS usage (such as EC2, Fargate, and Lambda) in exchange for a committed amount of usage (measured in $/hour) over 1 or 3 years. Types of Saving Plans Savings Plans provide more flexibility than Reserved Instances (RIs) and come in two types: Compute Savings Plans: Provide the most flexibility and apply to any EC2 instance regardless of region, instance family, operating system, or tenancy. They can also apply to AWS Fargate and AWS Lambda usage. EC2 Instance Savings Plans: Similar to traditional RIs, these plans apply to a specific instance family within a region and offer slightly higher savings. With the restrictions coming to the RI marketplace, Saving Plans are a more attractive option for AWS customers to save money in the cloud. Comparing Reservation Options with Savings Plans Customers may be advised to move to Convertible Reservations to lower cloud costs. However, it is important to evaluate if it aligns with your cloud operations and requirements before diving into this option. Let’s take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of the Convertible Reservation. Examples of AWS EC2 Plans, Payment Models and Savings    Convertible Reservation - Pros and Cons  Customers may consider convertible Reservations as an alternative to Standard RIs.  Pros: Ability to change the size, operating system, family, and server generation. Along with the option to update the purchase and increase its value without extending the end date.  Example: Let’s pretend that we need to cover a C5.XLARGE Linux server in N. Virginia. Below is the pricing for c5.xlarge, Linux, N. Virginia  On-demand = $0.17/hr 3 yr Convertible = $0.082 (52% savings) 3 yr Compute Savings Plan = $0.082 (52% savings) We purchase a 3-year No Upfront purchase on January 1st, 2024 for 3 years.  Start Date = 1/1/2024 End Date = 1/1/2027 Purchase = $0.082/hr    Now we have a scenario where on January 1st, 2025, we no longer need this C5.XLARGE server and need to replace it with 2 M5.XLARGE servers ($0.192/hr/server), Linux, N. Virginia. Below would be the scenario for both models (savings will be the same)   CONVERTIBLE On January 1st, 2025, we convert the c5.xlarge to 2 m5. xlarge, Linux, N. Virginia.  Value of the purchase has increased from $0.082/hr to $0.194 New Value = $0.194 End Date = January 1st, 2027  COMPUTE SAVINGS PLANS  On January 1st, 2025 we will have to add a new purchase to cover the difference ($0.194-$0.082=$0.112). This purchase will expire on January 1st, 2028, NOT 2027.  We will now have two purchases with two different end dates:  Purchase 1:  Value = $0.082 End Date = 1/1/2027 Purchase 2:  Value = $0.112 End Date = 1/1/2028   Cons: Region is not flexible - In the example above, we are stuck if the m5.xlarge servers that need to replace the c5.xlarge are in Ireland. Savings Plans are region-flexible.  Requires manual or programmatic change - AWS does not convert it for you - Converting the RI requires going into AWS and manually or programmatically changing the c5.xlarge to m5.xlarge.  Savings Plans detect new instance types and change the coverage without intervention. This reduces the chance of waste since no intervention is required - AWS is taking care of it for you.  Anodot’s recommendation: We recommend purchasing a 3-year Compute Savings Plan for safety and maximum savings. Why? Successful companies will increase Cloud consumption as their business grows, requiring flexible purchases for changing architecture. Additionally, a 3-year commitment to AWS is not a significant risk if the company foresees continued usage. Keep in Mind:  Don't assume everything will be fine with your RI purchases. Take the time to review what you've bought and ensure no architecture changes will leave you with unused RIs.  Contact AWS: Suppose you want to replace all RIs with a 3-year Savings Plans purchase, approach AWS, and request migration from RIs to a 3-year SP purchase. They may agree if the value of SP purchases matches or exceeds that of RIs. AWS Savings Plans and Anodot Customers who used to depend on RIs will seek a solution to set up the perfect Saving Plan that suits their needs. Anodot can help you get a handle on your AWS usage patterns to make informed decisions about which Saving Plans to obtain. For instance, if Anodot notices that you're consistently using a specific service, you might want to jump on a Saving Plan for that service to cut costs. Check out Anodot on the AWS marketplace. And the best part? Try our cloud cost management there for free!

Our solution (Anodot) and CloudZero are popular choices regarding third-party solutions for businesses managing cloud costs, adapting a FinOps approach to make their cloud operations more efficient. That's why a platform that can effectively support a FinOps model has become necessary for optimizing cloud functionality. Let's analyze and dive deeper into who offers the best solutions, technology, and support to take your FinOps culture in the cloud to the next level. Company Profiles Background of Anodot We are a prominent business monitoring solution revolutionizing how companies comprehend and manage their cloud expenses. With a strong focus on FinOps, we deliver robust features, including multicloud visibility, Kubernetes insights, and cost-saving recommendations. Overview of Anodot's cloud cost monitoring solution as a FinOps tool Our AI platform proactively identifies and resolves issues, allowing businesses to optimize performance and make data-driven decisions. Check out our white paper for a deeper overview of how to build and launch a successful FinOps practice!     Our features are motivated by the three components of a successful FinOps strategy*. Optimize: A comprehensive solution to address all your FinOps requirements, offering compatibility and support across AWS, Azure, and GCP platforms. Inform: Automatic data updates once the billing invoice refreshes, and we also keep at least 12 months of historical data stored. Operate: Visualization of K8s costs at different levels: namespace, cluster, node, pod stack, and by object labels. *Established as the three pieces of a complete strategy by the FinOps Foundation.   Background of CloudZero CloudZero enables organizations to make informed decisions, detect cost overruns, and optimize cloud spending. Its real-time cost anomaly and waste detection capabilities help prevent accidental overspending and drive profitability. Overview of CloudZero's cloud cost monitoring solution as a FinOps tool CloudZero is an adequate option for businesses migrating their data and activities to the cloud. However, when implementing the complete strategy of Inform, Optimize, and Operate by the FinOps Foundation, their platform needs to leverage this practice entirely. Basic: Forecasting and budgeting capabilities (but reportings are inconsistent). Limited specialization: Exclusively AWS, K8s, and Snowflake. Simple support: Still need to release an MSP version. Breakdown of FinOps features Anodot We aim to give you a complete picture of your cloud costs so you can understand what's happening and continuously enhance your cloud operations. Visibility: Top-notch (according to up-to-date info), with multi-cloud capabilities and shared costs. Recommendations: Over 40 types of cost-reducing recommendations (over 60 types for AWS!) with remediation instructions through CLI and AWS Console. API: Easy to use and operationalize (many customers consume our data through API). MSP Compatibility: Our MSP-ready solution has multitenancy, customer invoicing, and discount management rules. CloudZero CloudZero provides some basic features for advanced savings and FinOps insights. However, while the platform offers cost visibility and allocation, it needs more tools for a successful FinOps program. Simple insights: Teams using CloudZero won't be able to dive deeper into cloud cost and eliminate waste. Minimal technology: Lacks ML-powered forecasting, budgeting, and anomaly detection for precise cloud spend management. Inadequate customization: No pre-configured, customized reports and forecasts to deliver relevant, customized reporting for FinOps personas. Anodot or CloudZero: Which is better for a FinOps-focused Cloud? More and more organizations are adopting FinOps to manage cloud costs. It optimizes spending, promotes financial accountability, and enables informed decision-making on cloud usage. After reviewing Anodot and CloudZero, who can you trust to provide insights, recommendations, and customizations for a thriving FinOps culture? We innovate with you, recognizing that you require more than just functionality. You need a platform that provides real-time visibility, analytics, and optimization for MSPs. BTW: We'll level up your FinOps and cloud cost management game whenever you're ready!

According to a recent HashiCorp-Forrester report, 94% of enterprises overspend in the cloud due to underused resources, overprovisioning, and ineffective management. So, how can businesses optimize cloud usage and allocate resources efficiently to avoid unnecessary expenses? In this post, we'll cover the must-knows about cloud billing: the terms, the charges, and the tools to help you cut back on overspending ASAP! Basic Terminology on Cloud Billing Before diving into the ins and outs of cloud billing, it's helpful to grasp a few key concepts and get familiar with common terms. Cloud billing Refers to calculating, tracking, and managing the costs associated with cloud services. Cost management tools Software solutions help businesses monitor, analyze, and optimize cloud expenses and billing. Cost allocation tags Labels or metadata that businesses can assign to their cloud resources to categorize and track costs. Budget Alerts Notifications or alerts triggered when specific spending thresholds or limits are reached within a defined budget. Getting a good grasp of cloud terminology can help you learn and understand cloud billing, especially if you're starting your cloud journey. The Basics of Cloud Charges What are cloud charges? Cloud charges refer to the costs or fees of cloud services and resources. When businesses or teams use cloud computing, they usually pay for their resources, like storage space, computing power, data transfer, and extra features or services offered by cloud service providers. Types of cloud charges Understanding the various types of charges on your cloud bill is crucial to managing and optimizing your cloud expenses effectively. Cloud charges can generally be categorized into a few main types: Compute Resources  Charges for the virtual machines or instances that run your applications. Pricing is usually based on the size of the instance and the time it’s running. Storage  Fees for storing data in the cloud. This includes object storage, block storage, and file storage, with costs often based on the amount of data stored and the duration of storage. Data Transfer Costs associated with transferring data in and out of the cloud platform. Ingress is often free, but it can incur charges, especially when data is transferred to the internet or different regions. Services Many cloud providers offer managed services like databases, AI and machine learning, IoT, and more. Each service has its own pricing model, generally reflecting the level of resources consumed or the number of requests made. Support Plans  Optional charges for support services range from basic support to enterprise-grade offerings that come with higher costs. Licensing You may also be billed for software licenses if you’re using proprietary software on the cloud. Did you know? Tools like Anodot’s Cloud Unit Economics and CostGPT can assist FinOps teams in understanding the impact of cloud spending on business performance, provide instant insights, and help optimize cloud spend. The Basics of Cloud Charges Understanding the various types of charges on your cloud bill is crucial to managing and optimizing your cloud expenses effectively. Cloud charges can generally be categorized into a few main types: Compute Resources: Charges for the virtual machines or instances that run your applications. Pricing is usually based on the size of the instance and the time it's running. Storage: Fees for storing data in the cloud. This includes object storage, block storage, and file storage, with costs often based on the amount of data stored and the duration of storage. Data Transfer: Costs associated with transferring data in and out of the cloud platform. Ingress is often free, but egress can incur charges, especially when data is transferred out to the internet or to different regions. Services: Many cloud providers offer various managed services like databases, AI and machine learning, IoT, and more. Each service has its own pricing model, generally reflecting the level of resources consumed or the number of requests made. Support Plans: Optional charges for support services, which can range from basic support to enterprise-grade offerings that come with higher costs. Licensing: If you're using proprietary software on the cloud, you may also be billed for software licenses. Step-by-step guide for managing cloud spend Budget alerts: Start by setting up budget alerts within your cloud service provider’s platform to receive notifications when your spending approaches your threshold. Tagging strategies: Implementing tagging strategies can help you track costs by department, project, or environment, making it easier to identify where resources are being used and where they can be trimmed. Billing dashboard: Regularly review your billing dashboard to understand your usage patterns and adjust your spend accordingly. Reserved instances or savings plans: Opt for reserved instances or savings plans for predictable workloads to benefit from discounted rates compared to on-demand pricing. Cleaning up unused resources: Keeping a watchful eye on cloud waste can help you ditch unnecessary data and keep your storage efficient. By applying these strategies, you can take control of your cloud finances and avoid unexpected charges, keeping your cloud bill transparent and predictable. FinOps tools for Cost Optimization FinOps is about bringing financial accountability to the variable spend model of the cloud, ensuring that everyone takes ownership of their cloud usage. The competitive analysis of FinOps tools can guide organizations in selecting the right platform that aligns with their specific needs. Did you know? Anodot’s solutions for Managed Service Providers help make informed pricing decisions and build a cost optimization plan that maintains higher profit margins. Other ways for cloud cost optimization Use cloud cost management tools for detailed analysis and recommendations. Embrace a FinOps culture for better financial accountability and ownership of cloud usage. Implement best practices such as rightsizing and selecting cost-effective pricing models. Automate operations and monitoring to maintain a proactive stance on cost management. Consult with experts and leverage competitive analyses to choose the best platform for your organization’s needs.   Looking ahead on cloud billing As your business scales, cloud usage can fluctuate in the blink of an eye! This can lead to unexpected charges planned for properly. To avoid cost-related surprises, understand the terms and what they do in the cloud to become fluent in implementing forecasting methods that consider historical data, growth trends, and potential changes in service requirements. Need a refresher? Just remember these highlights: Implementing a budget that reflects your cloud usage predictions. Analyzing your past cloud bills to identify usage patterns and growth rates. Leveraging FinOps tools can simplify this process by providing predictive analytics and budgeting features that help you set threshold alerts to prevent overspending. Stay informed about the cloud provider’s pricing models and discount options, such as reserved instances or savings plans, which can further refine your budgeting strategy. Consistent monitoring and adjusting your cloud budget are essential as your business and the cloud market evolve. Dealing with costs in the cloud can be nerve-racking, but hopefully, this post points you in the right direction to get started! If you need further help, you can schedule a meeting with our cloud cost management experts!  

Kubernetes or K8s is an open-source production-grade container orchestration system for automating, scaling, and managing containerized applications. A container is a lightweight, standalone, executable ready-to-run software package that contains everything needed to run an application. It includes the runtime, code, libraries, systems tools, and default values for any essential settings. Managing, deploying, and scaling these containers becomes an extremely complicated and challenging task in real-world scenarios. This is where Kubernetes comes in and makes this entire process much simpler and streamlined. Key components of K8s The core components of Kubernetes are: Node: a node is a worker machine in a Kubernetes cluster. An example of a node is a Virtual Machine instance Pod: a pod is a single instance of a running process in a Kubernetes cluster Deployment: a deployment is a controller that facilitates application deployment Service: service is an abstract way to expose a Kubernetes deployment as a network service Volume: volume is a directory that contains data which is accessed by the pods [CTA id="17c26fe6-0b88-497d-8fe2-a14458e3d1c7"][/CTA] Features of K8s Some features of Kubernetes are: Horizontal Scaling: Using Kubernetes you can scale your application up or down based on the system requirements or automatically based on the CPU usage. Automated Rollouts and Rollbacks: Kubernetes provides the functionality of automated rollouts for your applications. It ensures that it doesn’t kill all your instances at the same time as your changes are rolled out. In case something goes wrong Kubernetes will roll back the changes for you. Self-Healing: Kubernetes can automatically restart or replace the nodes or containers that fail. It can also kill the containers that do not respond to user-defined health checks. Load Balancing and Service Discovery: Kubernetes provides pods with their own IP addresses and a single DNS name for a set of pods. This helps optimize load-balancing across pods. Storage Orchestration: Kubernetes can automatically mount your desired storage system. It can be local storage, iSCSI or NFS network storage systems, or storage systems provided by popular cloud providers. Dual-Stack: Kubernetes is dual-stack. It can allocate both IPv4 or IPv6 addresses to pods and services. Batch Execution and Continuous Integration: K8s provide the functionality of managing batch and CI workloads with the capability of replacing failed containers. Secret and Configuration Management: Kubernetes can deploy and update configuration and secrets without rebuilding the container image. It also ensures that the secrets in your stack configuration are not exposed. Extensibility: Kubernetes allows custom functionalities to be added to the system without modifying its core binaries. Monitoring and Logging: K8s has integration capabilities with major logging and monitoring services which provide useful insights into the system. Kubernetes: Visibility and Optimization Per-pod visibility in a Kubernetes cluster is important for any organization that wants to debug pod-level issues, optimize deployments, monitor performance, and improve resource utilization. Using Anodot, FinOps teams can fine-tune Kubernetes resource allocation. This includes allocating the correct amount of resources per cluster, namespace, node, pod, and container. Anodot’s solutions provide comprehensive K8s visibility that you can use to continuously optimize your Kubernetes environment and hence your deployed applications. Per-pod visibility and optimization can be achieved in the following ways: CPU and Memory usage: It is crucial to analyze clusters and nodes to identify overprovisioned Kubernetes pods in terms of memory or CPU usage and optimize their resources accordingly. Audit Logs: Kubernetes audit logs provide crucial logs of the system that are highly useful for debugging issues and analyzing the system. Monitoring and Analysis: Prometheus is the industry standard monitoring tool for Kubernetes. It has the capability of extracting metrics from Kubernetes pods and derives meaningful insights from them. Prometheus is often used in sync with Grafana for visualization of the extracted metrics. Accurate Cost Allocation: Kubernetes clusters are shared services with applications that can be run by several teams simultaneously. This means there’s no direct cost of a specific container. That’s why breaking costs down by compute, storage, data transfer, shared cluster costs, or waste can help get visibility into the structure of spend and pave the path to optimization. Resource & Request Limits: It is a good practice to set proper request limits for CPU and memory for your Kubernetes pods. Setting up these resource and request limits helps the Kubernetes scheduler in better decision-making. This ensures that the pods are only using the resources they require and helps in avoiding issues such as resource contention.  Autoscaling: Kubernetes provides two types of Autoscalers. Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) and Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA). HPA is used to scale the number of pod replicas based on metrics such as CPU and memory usage whereas VPA adjusts the CPU and memory limits based on the usage. It is often a good idea to use the services of companies such as Anodot to manage a highly scalable Kubernetes deployment. Anodot provides production-grade Kubernetes deployment services that are highly scalable and performant. With Anodot’s powerful algorithms and multi-dimensional filters, you can analyze your Kubernetes deployment’s cluster-level and pod-level performance in-depth and identify underutilization at the node and pod level.

We're excited to be attending one of the biggest events in the MSP space. MSP Global brings together industry leaders, partners, and key stakeholders to share knowledge on FinOps and cloud costs for MSP success. We're thrilled to bring our expertise and insights, showing how we can maximize the value of your cloud technology investments. With all these awesome perks of this conference, it's not crazy to think that a ticket to this event is out of your budget. But here's the best part: a standard pass is completely free with our code vFhW3zYZ! MSP Global will occur November 14 - 16, 2023, in Nürburgring, Germany. What's Anodot bringing to MSP Global? We understand that one of the biggest challenges that MSPs face is managing cloud costs. 70% of companies overshoot their cloud budgets. That's why we're going to MSP Global to show how a FinOps approach optimizes cloud spending and maximizes your ROI. Come and find us; we can show you how to build solid foundations in each FinOps phase with Anodot’s model! [CTA id="56314b22-eb7d-42aa-b9bf-1f3b0024cc83"][/CTA]   What's included in your FREE ticket to MSP Global? The Standard Pass gives you access to Nürburgring race track venue, including the main stages, Exhibition Hall, hotel event spaces, and, of course, the legendary track. Plus, you're invited to all the main parties and concerts to supercharge your networking game. This pass also comes with free shuttle service to the Nürburgring race track, along with complimentary lunch and coffee breaks. WHAT A STEAL!🤯 Where will we be? Anodot will be hosting a booth at G07. Our team can't wait to meet and interact with you! As a reliable MSP partner, our experts have a deep understanding of how to harness the real power of FinOps for MSP success. Are we going to be doing a presentation? Melissa Abecasis, Anodot’s Customer Success Director, will discuss how to keep your cool when cloud costs go haywire! With 8 years of experience in the industry, she's here to help MSPs scale effortlessly. Bring your questions and get ready to learn from one of the best! Can't wait to see you there! MSP Global is a globally recognized event for MSPs, where top leaders, renowned experts, and trusted vendors come together to learn from one another. We're excited to see you from November 14 - 16, 2023, in Nürburgring, Germany. You can find us at booth G07, where the amazing Melissa Abecasis will share her insights on the MSP space! Til then, Auf Wiedersehen!

In our first blog post, we introduced the concept of cloud unit economics—a system to measure cost and usage metrics. It helps maximize cloud value for better outcomes per dollar spent. We reviewed what cloud unit economics is, why it’s crucial to FinOps success, and how it enables organizations to unlock the full business value potential of cloud computing. To quickly recap, cloud unit economics provides an objective measure of cloud-based SaaS development (e.g., cost to produce) and delivery costs (e.g., cost to serve) on a per-unit basis, directly supporting every FinOps principle, and depends on key interactions across all other FinOps domains. Cloud practitioners seeking to balance cost optimization and value delivery must understand cloud economics and embrace this FinOps capability.  In this blog post, we will take a deep dive into the benefits of cloud unit economics, how to get started, and discuss the FinOps Foundation’s cloud unit economics maturity model. (Some of the information in this blog series has been adapted from Unit Economics Working Group by FinOps Foundation under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.) What are the benefits of cloud unit economics? Unit economics and the measurement of unit costs are important elements of FinOps that enable enterprises to make informed, data-driven decisions about their cloud investments. Cloud unit economics is a method for maximizing value that allows you to: Focus on efficiency and value instead of total cost Communicate the cost and value of all your cloud activities Benchmark how well you're performing vs. your FinOps goals and the market Identify areas for improvement Establish efficiency targets Continuously optimize to maximize return on investment With cloud unit economics metrics, multiple stakeholders can engage in meaningful discussions about cloud investments, moving conversations from absolute spend to business value achieved per unit of cloud spend, enabling inter-departmental collaboration essential to FinOps success.  Additionally, cloud unit economics helps organizations quantify the impact of cloud spend on business performance, explain engineering contribution to gross margins, improve profitability analysis and forecasting, support data-driven pricing decisions, build cost optimization plans, and increase profit margins. Cloud unit economics is critical to understanding the connection between current business demand and cloud costs, how predicted changes in business demand will impact future cloud costs, and what future cloud costs should be if waste is minimized. Organizations that can successfully measure and integrate cloud unit economics into their FinOps practice can gain insights that will help them maximize the business advantage they obtain in the cloud. How to get started with cloud unit economics Cloud unit economics metrics don’t have to be about revenue—which may be challenging for many organizations due to their business type or maturity level. By measuring unit costs, organizations can quickly build a common language between stakeholders that helps ensure decisions are made quickly based on data-driven insights rather than guesswork or intuition.  You should start discussing cloud unit economics at the very beginning of the FinOps Journey—it is as important as it is complex to implement. To get started: Identify your first unit cost metric/s and build a unit cost prototype—cost per customer or tenant is a good metric to start with. Create a systematic way (e.g., automation) to collect and process the data from existing data sources including cloud bills, logs, data warehouses, and APM platforms. Share insights to build support and encourage unit cost integration in your FinOps activities. Make sure the FinOps team is responsible for maintaining a repository of cloud unit economics metrics and articulating their business value [CTA id="6c56537c-2f3f-4ee7-bcc1-1b074802aa4c"][/CTA] The FinOps Foundation's cloud unit economics maturity model can serve as a guide to planning your next steps, and achieving better adoption and use of cloud unit economics in your FinOps practice. Adapted Cloud Unit Economics maturity model by FinOps Foundation When initially adopting cloud unit economics, choose metrics that are supported by existing data sources and simplify unit cost models. Keep in mind, unit metrics should not be static, but should evolve to reflect business objectives and insights gained. In later stages, you may want to add new data sources, modify financial inputs, or add new unit metrics. The most important thing to do once you have your first metric/s is to incorporate unit costs into your FinOps activities: Make strategic decisions and plan optimization activities based on unit costs—rather than total costs Calculate unit forecasts and budgets based on unit costs Leverage unit metrics in usage and cost conversations with engineers Communicate value using unit metrics and build a culture of FinOps Cloud unit economics metrics link cloud spending to business value, allowing stakeholder groups to make informed decisions about how to use the cloud most effectively. Discussions about cloud unit economics should begin as soon as FinOps stakeholders are engaged. Delaying this activity usually results in higher cloud costs, decreased team motivation, and slower FinOps culture development. In the final part of this three-part series, we will discuss best practices for implementing cloud unit economics. Change the economics of your cloud with Anodot With certified FinOps platforms like Anodot, you can establish and mature FinOps capabilities faster. Anodot is the only FinOps platform purpose-built to measure and drive success in cloud financial management, giving organizations complete visibility into KPIs and baselines, advanced reporting capabilities, and savings recommendations to help control cloud waste and improve cloud unit economics. Anodot helps FinOps teams quantify the cloud’s role in financial performance, forecast profitability, and optimize their unit costs to maximize their profits. Learn more or contact us to start a conversation.