AWS Cost Anomaly Detection for Smarter CostManagement

Operating in the cloud brings various cost advantages for sure, considering the on-demand usage and pay-as-you go pricing models. With its dynamic nature, cloud encourages businesses to experiment more often, embrace innovativeness and respond to evolving market conditions quickly. However, realizing such advantages are up to the ability and capability of businesses to effectively plan and manage cloud spending. The agility, velocity and elasticity of the cloud is great for strategic goals and being agile, but they might become a financial burden if not monitored and managed carefully.

The pricing philosophy of AWS helps businesses to reduce their costs as they scale and choose the most efficient pricing level based on their needs. You can check our previous blog post on Cost Optimization in Cloud and how to achieve cost savings:

Well, how can companies track and optimize their spending on cloud resources and lower their TCO against unexpected variances in cloud spending besides the service and pricing options? The answer is implementing continuous cost monitoring to plan and operate within your specified budgets. Being fully aware of your cost drivers and patterns gives you the ability and flexibility to understand and assess your actual costs and take proper action for unexpected spikes. In this blog post, we will take a look at the features and benefits of the newly introduced service, AWS Cost Anomaly Detection for effective cloud financial management.

The Newly Introduced AWS Cost Anomaly Detection

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection is a new service just launched this week, currently in preview. AWS Cost Anomaly Detection leverages machine learning technology to help customers assess and evaluate the unexpected cost variances with ease, convenience and confidence. The ML capabilities of AWS Cost Anomaly Detection automatically defines the root causes of such events and helps you identify and work on anomalous spending activities.

How Does AWS Cost Anomaly Detection Improves Cost Management?

Different Monitoring Levels

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection enables you to customize the level of cost monitoring based on your needs. There are 4 main categories for monitors:

• AWS Services Level

• Linked Account Level

• Cost Category Level

• Cost Allocation Tags

You can leverage individual service level monitoring if you want detailed monitoring across different services and focus on smaller anomalies rather than a larger view across your organization. For a more comprehensive look, you can leverage linked accounts, cost categories or cost allocation tags, which enable you to monitor spending across multiple teams that you define with. For example, you can monitor the aggregated spending of an individual linked account if you’d like to see total spending of your teams or grouped accounts. On the other hand, cost category levels and cost allocation tags also might be helpful if you want to track and evaluate your costs based on your organizational structure and various cost centers for accounting and financial purposes.

Automatically Adjusted Thresholds for Accurate Analysis

The biggest convenience here is that you don’t have to define an anomaly. The service uses machine learning technologies and automatically defines the anomaly levels itself based on your business’ expected organic growth rate and spending patterns. In this way, your threshold levels are being continuously adjusted to accurate levels without manual interference.

Alert preferences include thresholds and notification periods. You define a monetary level for the alert thresholds to be notified for the detected anomalies that impact more than this specified level. The alerting frequency also depends on your preferences, you can set it for individual basis or daily and weekly summaries. With these different monitoring options, you can also set different relevant stakeholders for each monitor. It is all up to you to define how often and what you’d like to get notified.

Saving Time and Money with Automated Root Cause Analysis

AWS Cost Anomaly Detection automatically monitors and detects anomalies and highlights the possible root causes for further investigation. The service lists the useful information such as service, account ID, region and usage type and it becomes easier for you to understand and assess what might have led to the unexpected increase in your spending. This way, you don’t have to dedicate a large amount of time or effort to analyze cost anomalies. AWS Cost Anomaly Detection enables you to be well-informed about your detected spikes in cost and take proper action in the right time. The service is also integrated with AWS Cost Explorer, which further increases your ability to analyze and investigate anomalies with ease.

AWS Cost Management Services

There are many services and tools available included in AWS Cost Management, each enabling businesses to be aware of their ongoing spending patterns, get notified and informed about their cost patterns and variances. These tools also enable you to monitor, control and compare your spending patterns through creating custom dashboards, budget thresholds, resource tags and so on.

Get more information from following links about AWS Cost Anomaly Detection and get started:

• AWS Cost Financial Management: https://aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management

• AWS Cost Anomaly Detection: https://aws.amazon.com/aws-cost-management/aws-cost-anomaly-detection

• Setting up AWS Cost Anomaly Detection: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awsaccountbilling/latest/aboutv2/manage-ad.html