Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Although Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced cost categories a few years ago, many people still struggle to understand the difference between them and AWS tags. If this sounds familiar to you, you are not alone. This quick guide will walk you through AWS Cost Categories, how they work, and how they differ from tags in AWS.

Companies that effectively implement SaaS pricing and packaging have the distinct advantage of being able to provide their customers with a high level of value at a reasonable price. And, they’re able to do it in a way that is profitable and worthwhile for the business. The problem is that packaging and pricing SaaS products is anything but simple. There are a lot of variables involved in deciding on a SaaS product’s pricing strategy.

With CloudCheckr, users can manage the cost, security, and compliance of their public cloud. It also offers a VMware-to-AWS migration service. But the platform's multi-level pricing structure can confuse some customers. Others feel CloudCheckr is overkill for their current cloud adoption stage. This quick guide walks you through cloud management tools like CloudCheckr.

The struggle for better cloud visibility is common amongst software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. SaaS applications are more complex than on-premise solutions by nature — there is a lot more surface area to consider. Distributed and multi-tenant systems are inherently more complex. Distributed systems, as often found in cloud architectures, are generally scaled out horizontally much more so than traditional single instance applications.

In 2021, the most popular vendor in the cloud infrastructure services market, Amazon Web Services (AWS), controlled 32% of the entire market. To encourage more businesses to choose AWS, Amazon started a program to help accelerate migration — the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (AWS MAP). Below we’ll cover the details of the program, the potential financial benefits for companies looking to take part, and how to make sure you get all the financial benefits available.

If you’ve ever been in charge of your company’s cloud cost, you likely understand how painful it can be to accurately allocate shared cloud spend. In fact, in the 2021 State of FinOps report, “dealing with shared costs” was the second most common challenge faced by FinOps. Today, I’m excited to share that we’ve taken a huge step toward alleviating that pain.

AWS resource tagging is fundamental for effective cloud cost management. By creating and allocating cost-related tags in AWS, you can organize and manage your resources according to keys and values that make sense to you. This helps you better understand your cloud costs and manage your spending. But proper tagging isn't easy. While AWS provides several useful resources, you may still run into some issues that require more involved solutions.

As cloud use has increased, so have the costs associated with it. In 2020, surveyed organizations reported being over budget for their cloud spend by an average of 23%. Most are spending more than they expected, and to top it off — they don’t feel they’re getting value from that spend.

It's something you know. Those who rely on or offer Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions are under constant pressure to innovate. Often, this means quickly building new features and releasing them more frequently. Staying on budget and on time is also critical for staying competitive. Likewise, SaaS providers should also offer customers cost-effective solutions to their technology challenges. But that’s not all. You must also always release quality code that provides seamless user experiences.

Profitability in SaaS can be tricky. A company's net earnings are based on its invested capital, assets, and equity. But its profit margin shows how much money it extracts from its total sales or revenue — its ability to turn revenue into profit. Performing a thorough margin analysis or profit margin analysis is a reliable way to assess the company’s financial health.