Want to hear a sad but true fact? 70% of companies overshoot their cloud budgets.  Why is that? Although the cloud is a mighty tool for speed, scalability, and innovation, the inability to see costs can lead companies to limit cloud usage, which hampers innovation and puts them at a disadvantage against the competition.  Rather than limiting cloud usage, adopting the FinOps approach provides the insights you need to feel confident about your cloud costs. The goal of FinOps is not to reduce cloud costs but to maximize the value of your cloud technology investments. An organization can benefit from FinOps in several ways: Business executives can ‌leverage the cloud to gain a competitive edge.  Engineering can benefit from innovation, cost efficiency, and faster delivery. Finance teams can analyze, allocate, and forecast cloud costs more effectively, reducing budget variances. Procurement teams can negotiate better rates, maximize benefits, and procure cloud services more efficiently. So, how do you get started on a successful FinOps journey? In this blog, we’ll briefly explore how to implement a successful MVP FinOps strategy in your organization. (For a deeper dive on this, check out our whitepaper on The Business Value of Cloud and FinOps.) A quick recap on FinOps (the what, the why, the when) What is Finops?  FinOps, short for Financial Operations, is a discipline that encompasses managing and optimizing cloud costs. It focuses on ensuring transparency, accountability, and efficiency in cloud spending.  Here are some key points about FinOps to keep in mind: - FinOps involves collaborating with cross-functional teams, including finance, operations, and IT, to drive financial accountability in cloud usage. - The main goal of FinOps is to strike a balance between cost optimization and innovation in the cloud, enabling organizations to maximize the value they derive from their cloud investments. - It involves implementing cloud financial management practices, such as budgeting, forecasting, cost allocation, and showback/chargeback to enhance cost control and decision-making. - FinOps also emphasizes using cloud cost management tools and automation to gain visibility into cloud usage patterns, identify cost-saving opportunities, and optimize spending. - Through adopting FinOps, businesses can achieve greater financial transparency, optimize cloud costs, and align cloud investments with their overall business objectives. Why do you need FinOps?   Finops combines financial and operational practices to optimize cloud spending and maximize ROI.  Here’s what your organization can gain with FinOps: - Scalability: Finops helps align cloud resources with business needs, allowing organizations to scale their operations efficiently. - Cost Optimization: By analyzing cloud expenses, Finops identifies opportunities to reduce costs and eliminate wasteful spending. - Budget Management: With Finops, businesses can set budgets, monitor spending against those budgets, and make necessary adjustments. - Data-driven Insights: Leveraging data analytics, Finops provides valuable insights on cloud usage, trends, and cost drivers. - Collaboration: Finops promotes cross-functional collaboration between finance, operations, and IT teams, fostering a holistic approach to financial management. When should you start FinOps?  There’s never a bad time to initiate a FinOps approach to managing cloud costs. The benefits (as mentioned above) can have an immediate, positive impact on a business’s bottom line. The sooner you optimize cloud spending, the sooner your business will reap those benefits.  The main challenge is getting your organization and team on board ASAP.  So, what is the best approach to building a FinOps practice? Start small and gradually increase scale, scope, and complexity to avoid overwhelming teams with change. [CTA id="47462b23-d885-42f9-9a91-7644f2c84e50"][/CTA] Building solid foundations in each FinOps phase with Anodot’s model Starting at a small scale with a limited scope allows you to assess the outcomes of your actions and gain insights into the value of further action. From this angle, you can introduce new principles in your organization without discouraging them with abrupt change. (It's a win-win situation!) Anodot’s MVP FinOps implementation model, presented in detail in the white paper, can help lay the foundation for active FinOps while keeping engineers focused on speed and innovation. The MVP FinOps approach is based on the three basic FinOps components—people, processes, and tools: MVP FinOps team The MVP approach begins with a small cross-functional group that gradually builds the FinOps practice by focusing on a specific challenge or activity.  Identify an organizational home, key team members, and stakeholders necessary for initial success. MVP operating model:  The MVP FinOps approach necessitates selectively prioritizing critical capabilities in building an early-stage FinOps practice. This includes visibility, cost allocation, and tagging strategy to ensure accountability. Other aspects like cloud usage optimization or chargeback & finance integration can be addressed passively. Adapt the inform, optimize, and operate lifecycle phases for simplicity and agility. MVP KPIs and tools:  The MVP approach also endeavors to simplify the measurement of FinOps efficiency into its most important metrics, enabling you to assess the current impact of your FinOps efforts at the macro level to deliver immediate insights. We’ll identify initial KPIs for measuring FinOps efficiency and discuss tooling considerations.  With Andoot’s MVP FinOps implementation model, you’ll be able to: Integrate FinOps values and culture throughout the organization without holding back your engineers. Lay the foundations for a dedicated FinOps team with a cross-functional working group to drive FinOps. Establish good cost allocation that enables tracking, reporting, and forecasting spend by cost center or business unit. Identify opportunities to spend more effectively and prioritize high-value/low-effort rate optimizations that can be transparent to engineering teams.  Avoid painful billing surprises by identifying irregularities in cloud use and spending with automated anomaly detection. Define the right unit economic metrics for your organization and measure FinOps efficiency with six additional KPIs. Leverage FinOps tools as force multipliers and build processes to support your FinOps goals. Want to learn more about Anodot's MVP FinOps approach and how to implement it? Download the Anodot white paper: "Adopting an MVP FinOps approach." [CTA id="3639b338-9c7f-4fb5-b5a2-226de67b8e42"][/CTA]   FYI: Keep an eye out for part 2, where we'll dive into the important components for achieving FinOps success and prioritizing maturity efforts based on your company's needs! Drive FinOps success with Anodot FinOps platforms are force multipliers that can help you establish and mature key FinOps capabilities more quickly. 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. With Anodot, anyone can understand the true cost of their cloud resources, find ways to reduce cloud costs with advanced recommendations and make data-driven decisions to get the most out of their cloud investments with easy-to-use explanations. FinOps practitioners rely on Anodot to support their organizations' FinOps journeys to maximize the value of the cloud and establish a culture of cost awareness. Learn more at anodot.com/cloud-cost-management/, or contact us to start a conversation.

Amazon RDS or Relational Database Service is a collection of managed services offered by Amazon Web Services that simplify the processing of setting up, operating, and scaling relational databases on the AWS cloud. It is a fully managed service that provides highly scalable, cost-effective, and efficient database deployment. Features of AWS RDS Some features of Amazon Relational Database Service are: Fully Managed: Amazon RDS automates all the database operational tasks such as database setup, resource provisioning, automated backups, etc. Thus freeing up time for your development team to focus on product development. High Availability: Amazon RDS provides options for multi-region deployments, failover support, fault tolerance and read replicas for better performance. Security: RDS supports the functionality of data encryption in transit and at rest. It runs your database instances in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) based on AWS’s state-of-the-art VPC service. Scalability: Amazon RDS supports both vertical and horizontal scaling. Vertical scaling is suitable if you can’t change your application and database connectivity configuration. Horizontal scaling increases performance by extending the database operations to additional nodes. You can choose this option if you need to scale beyond the capacity of a single DB instance. Supports Multiple Database Engines: AWS RDS supports various popular database engines — Amazon Aurora with MySQL compatibility, Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL compatibility, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQL Server — and deploy on-premises with Amazon RDS on AWS Outposts. Backup and Restoration: Amazon RDS provides automatic backup and restoration capabilities and supports emergency database rollback. Monitoring Capabilities: AWS RDS provides seamless integration with AWS Cloud Watch which provides state-of-the-art monitoring and analysis capabilities. Managed database (RDS) vs. database self-management: When to choose which approach? Deciding between using a managed database or managing a database yourself hinges on several considerations, including infrastructure needs, budget, time, and expertise of your development team. At first glance, it might seem that a self-managed database is the most cost-effective way to go, but in the majority of cases, it is not true. It takes a huge amount of time and manpower to manage a scalable database that is truly cost-effective and efficient. Therefore it is often wise to let professionals from companies like Anodot do it for you. Anodot provides managed RDS service which is highly scalable and cost-effective. Moreover, Anodot's cost-saving recommendations cover RDS. Thus your development team can focus on product development rather than spending a massive amount of time managing the databases.     Both Managed and Self-managed databases have their pros and cons and the decision should be based on them: Pros of using Managed RDS Fully Managed: A managed RDS is a fully managed service that is very easy to operate and use. Monitoring and Analysis: Managed RDS comes with native built-in monitoring and analysis tools such as AWS Cloud Watch. These tools help derive useful insights from the system that can be used to improve the performance further. Scalability: A managed RDS instance provides vertical and horizontal scaling capabilities that can be invoked automatically or manually as per our requirements. High Availability: Managed RDS provide Multi-Availability Zones (multi-AZ) deployments across regions where the database instance are replicated across availability zones. This provides better fault tolerance and performance.  Native Integrations: A managed RDS instance provides native integrations with other useful tools and services provided by AWS. Backup and Storage: Automated data backups, storage, and restoration facilities are provided. Cons of using Managed RDS Configuration Restrictions: A fully managed RDS is not completely customizable and has many restrictions. Cost: A managed RDS is often more expensive than a self-hosted database, especially when the database size and number of instances grows. That’s why often it is a good idea to let domain experts specializing in native tools from companies like Andot handle the database management for you. Vendor Lock-In: Managed RDS has vendor lock-in i.e. migrating from such a database to another database is often very complicated and costly, as you are charged based on the usage. [CTA id="89ea4e30-a9b9-468c-959d-cc70c06293e3"][/CTA] Pros of using Self-Managed Databases No Configuration Restrictions: A self-managed database provides you full control of your database configurations. Setup and Version Control: Self-managed databases provide setup and version control flexibility. Cost-efficiency: Self-managed databases are often much more cost-effective than a managed RDS. No Vendor Lock-In: Self-managed databases have no vendor lock-in so it’s easier to migrate across databases and hosting providers. Cons of using Self-Managed Databases Scalability: In a self-managed database you have to handle all scalability operations such as sharding and replication on your own. Operational Overhead: Setting up data backups, firewalls, and security rules has to be done and managed by your dev team. Data Security: Each and every aspect of database security i.e. securing the database instances, setting up access control, and encryptions at different stages have to be set up and managed by you. Monitoring and Analytics: In a self-managed database you have to set up your own monitoring and analytics tools. Cost Overhead: If your database becomes too big and your development team doesn’t have enough experience managing such a vast amount of data you might need to spend a large amount of money on hiring more senior engineers. This increase in human capital expenses might end up costing you a large amount of money. To summarize, managed RDS should be used in the following scenarios: When you lack in-house expertise to manage a highly scalable database. When you want to reduce the operational overhead of your development team. When you need a database with good performance and high availability without doing too much manual intervention. When you want to avoid setting up custom monitoring and analytics tools and prefer the integrated tooling a managed database system comes with. Whereas, you should manage your database yourself in the following scenarios: When you have in-house expertise to manage databases at scale. When you want to reduce your database costs. When you need some custom database configurations that are not provided by a managed database provider. When you are willing to assign dedicated resources to set up, update, and maintain your database infrastructure.

Transform your approach to cloud cost management with thisAI-driven tool that delivers instant, actionable insights, simplifying complex pricing and identifying hidden expenses for more effective resource allocation.

Download this report to learn about the time of cost anomaly detection, realized cost savings and more. Learn what the top industry players and over 1000 Anodot customers are challenged by and how they optimize their cloud costs.

Managing cloud costs has become a must for FinOps-focused businesses. Gotta keep a close eye on those expenses! So, what is the best way to do it? Find a platform that can help you get cost visibility and catch any cloud costs anomalies before they turn into a money waste! With tons of FinOps tools, how do you figure out which one suits your needs? And what exactly should you be looking at? We get it! There’s much to consider when picking the best platform to get those cloud cost insights. Alright, let's dive into what makes Anodot stand out and check out the pros and cons of other FinOps tools. What makes Anodot the best FinOps tool?  First off, we’re a leading company specializing in real-time analytics and automated anomaly detection. Our AI platform detects and resolves issues preemptively, empowering businesses to optimize performance and make data-driven decisions. What makes us unique?  Focus: We've got you covered with support for AWS, Azure, and GCP. One tool to handle all your FinOps needs. Data: Data gets updated once the billing invoice is refreshed, and we keep at least 12 months of historical data stored. K8s: Visualize costs at different levels: namespace, cluster, node, pod stack, and by object labels. What makes our features similar to our competitors better? 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.  That's what sets us apart! But hey, who else is out there in this space? Let's find out! FinOps Tool Alternatives CloudZero:  Background: A cloud platform offering solutions like cloud cost monitoring, optimization, and insight reporting for businesses. Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts  Est. Employees: 100-250 Funding: $45M Data by Owler NetApp Spot CloudCheckr CMx:  Background: CloudCheckr is a cloud management platform offering cost optimization, activity monitoring, and compliance solutions for businesses. Headquarters: Rochester, New York Est. Employees: 100-250 Funding: $67.4M Data by Owler VMware CloudHealth:  Background: A cloud platform that offers solutions such as financial management and compliance for businesses. Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts Est. Employees: 250-500 Funding: $85.8M Data by Owler What are the pros and cons of these FinOps tools?  CloudZero Pros Automation: CloudZero automates cost tracking across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Cross-account support: Can analyze costs for individual accounts or across all accounts in one view Cons Limited feature set: CloudZero doesn't offer as many features as the other services, such as forecasting and budgeting capabilities. Area of specialization: Exclusively AWS, K8s, and Snowflake Looking for a tool that also specializes in MSP support? [CTA id="870a5fee-2fb6-4bd3-96bf-28b441372e04"][/CTA]   NetApp Spot CloudCheckr CMx Pros Spot, a highly regarded and unique solution, is becoming increasingly integrated.  Can control cloud costs in tandem with usage and performance. Cons Customers may be frustrated with the pre-NetApp version of the solution Limited scope: It is focused mainly on cost optimization rather than broader cloud management activities. VMware CloudHealth Pros Best offering for VMware-based public clouds and organizations transitioning to cloud from on-prem VMware. Provides a comprehensive view of the “cloud economic model” that allows users to understand their cloud resources and optimize costs. Cons The API presents multiple, fragmented, and restricted aspects. Customer success and services often come with additional, undisclosed costs. Final Thoughts on Our FinOps Tools Competitive Analysis So, what did we learn? The cloud costs management platform battlefield has some serious competition going on! These six platforms help their customers get some visibility and understand their cloud costs in a way that wouldn't be possible without them. BUT  Anodot cost-effectively does all of this, with user-friendly APIs and support on multiple cloud computing platforms. We're the game-changer that elevates your cloud cost monitoring to a new level. So even though the battlefield is fierce, there’s only one victor, and that’s us! Learn more.

The gaming industry has always been a highly lucrative and adored field. According to online gaming industry statistics, it is projected to surpass $33.77 billion by 2026. However, a downside emerges when governments impose substantial taxes on the income generated from gaming. It's happening now. The Indian government has decided to impose a 28% tax on online gaming, which may lead to a funding shortage and a decrease in investor confidence. Undoubtedly, many gaming companies will look for new strategies to save costs. Business monitoring is a powerful strategy that reduces costs, maintains performance, and enhances user experience. Let's explore the power of business monitoring, its benefits for the gaming industry, and Anodot's prominent role in this service. Enhancing Savings Identifying problems early is crucial for businesses, especially in the gaming industry. Spotting potential bugs is essential for a great user experience and saves time on resolution. Anodot's Business Monitoring and Anomaly Detection platform offers valuable solutions for identifying and preventing costly abnormalities in gaming operations. Here's how: Early Detection: Anodot helps online, and mobile gaming companies spot and troubleshoot game-specific problems early on. By keeping an eye on real-time metrics and data, it catches any unusual behavior that could affect player experience or revenue. (Check out this story.) [CTA id="b018de92-ed32-441f-bb60-5488b5b08c64"][/CTA]   Real-time Alerts and Forecasts: Anodot's autonomous monitoring solution provides real-time alerts and forecasts for revenue-critical business incidents. This allows gaming companies to proactively address potential problems before they escalate, enhancing operational efficiency. Cost Anomaly Detection: Anodot's machine learning can also keep an eye out for any unexpected cost changes. This way, gaming companies can better manage their expenses and find ways to save some cash. Enhanced Player Experience: Timely detection of abnormalities can lead to quicker resolution, reduced downtime, and improved customer satisfaction so your players can keep gaming without interruptions! Unexpected things can happen in your gaming operations that are beyond your control. But hey, you can still handle the abnormalities by using ML analytics. Our insights can help you save money to keep making your game the best it can be! Improving User Experience Your users are the key to your gaming success. When they have a blast playing your game, they'll keep returning for more and recommend it to other gamers! Unfortunately, the same thing can happen if your users aren't happy with your game. And when dealing with those new taxes, you'll want to keep your existing players and attract new ones consistently. Here's how Anodot can help: Proactive incident management: By promptly detecting anomalies, Anodot enables gaming companies to address issues that may negatively affect the user experience, minimizing downtime and maximizing player satisfaction. Comprehensive anomaly grouping: Anodot's platform can group anomalies across different silos, allowing businesses to quickly identify and address incidents that impact user experience, ensuring a seamless gaming experience for players. Optimized decision-making: With real-time business monitoring and anomaly detection, gaming companies can make informed decisions to optimize player experience and avoid potential losses. Enhanced user retention and brand reputation: By effectively detecting and addressing anomalies that impact user experience, Anodot's solution helps gaming companies retain players, boost player satisfaction, and maintain a positive brand reputation, contributing to long-term success in the competitive gaming industry. It only takes one bug or glitch to get players turned off from your game. To maintain a healthy user experience, staying alert for possible anomalies is imperative. Of course, getting a partner can help this process stay easy and automated! Optimizing Performance Keeping a close eye on and quickly resolving anomalies is important for top-notch performance in the gaming industry. So, how exactly does anomaly detection contribute to better gaming performance? Immediate Issue Detection: Proactive monitoring detects anomalies that may affect gameplay performance. Real-time tools and analytics help gaming companies identify issues like server latency, network congestion, or hardware failures early on. This allows swift action to address problems promptly. Enhanced Performance Optimization: Identifying anomalies offers valuable insights into game performance metrics. Real-time analysis enables gaming companies to identify bottlenecks, optimize server capacity, fine-tune game mechanics, and improve load balancing. These optimizations lead to smoother gameplay, reduced lag, and improved performance. Competitive Advantage: In the gaming industry, high-performance gameplay sets a company apart. Resolution of anomalies enables gaming companies to deliver superior gameplay experiences. By consistently providing high performance, companies can gain a competitive edge, attracting and retaining more players. Final Thoughts As of 2023, there are 3.220 billion gamers worldwide. The expansive market encompasses various demographics and can be very profitable for gaming companies. However, new industry regulations may emerge, impacting operations and triggering a chain reaction in how issues are addressed and resolved. This is why business monitoring is incredibly powerful. It effortlessly anticipates errors before they escalate into problems, offering remarkable benefits such as cost savings, enhanced user experience, and improved performance in the gaming industry. With Anodot's AI-powered business monitoring and anomaly detection, you can effortlessly tackle errors before they occur. So, no matter what new taxes come your way, rest assured that you're already cutting costs with Anodot. Let's talk! 

AWS DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database provided by Amazon Web Services. It is a fast and flexible database service which has been built for scale. What are the features of DynamoDB? Some features of DynamoDB are: Flexible Schema: DynamoDB is a NoSQL database. It provides a flexible schema which supports both document and key-value data models. Therefore each row can have any number of columns at any point in time. Scalability: Amazon DynamoDB is highly scalable. It has impeccable horizontal scaling capabilities that can handle more than 10 trillion requests per day. Performance: DynamoDB provides high throughput and low latency performance, which results in a millisecond response time for database operations and can manage up to 20 million requests per second. Security: DynamoDB encrypts the data at rest and supports encryption in transit. Its encryption capabilities along with the IAM capabilities of AWS provide state-of-the-art security. Availability: AWS DynamoDB provides guaranteed reliability and industry-standard availability with a Service Level Agreement of 99.999% availability. Backup and Restoration: DynamoDB provides automatic backup and restoration capabilities and supports emergency database rollback. Cost Optimization: Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed database that scales up and down automatically depending on your requirements. Integration with AWS Ecosystem: AWS DynamoDB provides seamless integration with other AWS services that can be used for data analytics, extracting insights and monitoring the system.  DynamoDB — Best Practices to maximize scale and performance Provisioned Capacity: Increase the floor of your autoscaling provision capacity beforehand to what you expect your peak traffic would be in scenarios where you are expecting a huge surge of traffic such as during the Black Friday Sale, Prime Day or Super Bowl. You can drop it down to the normal provision capacity when the high-traffic event is over. This ensures that the burst bucket capacity and adaptive scaling kick in and everything runs smoothly even with a massive surge in traffic.  Availability: If you want 5 nines availability (99.999%) in DynamoDB then enable Global Tables in your DynamoDB service which provides you with multi-region data replication. Providing 5 nines availability in this scenario is an SLA guarantee from AWS. A single region DynamoDB setup only provides 4 nines availability. Handling Aggregation Queries: Aggregation queries are complicated to deal with in a NoSQL scenario. DynamoDB streams can be used in sync with Lambda functions to compute this data in advance and write to an item in a table. This preserves valuable resources and the user is able to retrieve data instantly. This method can be used for all types of data change events like writes, updates, deletes etc. The data change event hits a DynamoDB stream which in turn triggers a Lambda function that computes the result. Serverless Computing Lambda Execution Timing: DynamoDB works along with AWS’s native Lambda functions to provide a serverless infrastructure. However, we need to keep in mind that the iterator age in a Lambda function is relatively low and manageable. If it is increasing, it should be in bursts and not via a steady increasing activity, if the Lambda function is too heavy and the work being done inside it is very time-consuming, it will result in your Lambda function falling behind your DynamoDB streams. This will cause the database to run out of stream buffer which eventually results in data loss at the edge of the streams. Policy Management: DynamoDB works in sync with AWS Identity and Access Management IAM functionality that provides you with fine-grained control over your access management. Typically the Principleof Least Privilege should be used — which states that a user or entity should only have access to the specific data, resources and applications that are needed to complete the required task. Fine-grained data scan policies can also be set in DynamoDB that control the database querying capabilities of an individual, thus creating a scenario where a user who should not have access to some data would not be able to extract it from the database. Global Secondary Indexes: GSIs can be used for cost optimization in scenarios where an application needs to perform many queries using a variety of different attributes as query criteria. Queries can be issued against these secondary indexes instead of running a full table scan. This approach results in drastic cost reduction. Provisioned throughput considerations for GSIs: In order to avoid potential throttling, the provisioned write capacity for a GSI should be equal to or greater than the write capacity of the base table. This is due to the fact that updates in the database would need to be written in both the base table and the Global Secondary Index. Provisioned Capacity with Auto Scaling: Generally, you should use provisioned when you have the bandwidth to understand your traffic patterns and are comfortable changing the capacity via the API. Auto Scaling should only be used in the following scenarios: When the traffic is predictable and steady When you can slowly ramp up batch/bulk loading jobs When pre-defined jobs can be scheduled where capacity can be pre-owned. Using DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX): Amazon DAX is a fully managed, high-availability cache for Amazon DynamoDB which provides 10x performance improvement. DAX should be used in scenarios where you need low-latency reads. For instance, DAX can provide performance improvement from milliseconds to microseconds even in a system that is processing millions of requests per second. Increasing Throughput: Implement read and write sharding for situations where you need to increase your throughput. The process of sharding involves splitting your data into multiple partitions and distributing the workload across them. Sharding is a very common and highly effective DBMS functionality. Batching: In scenarios where it is possible to read or write multiple items at once consider using batch operations as it significantly reduces the number of requests made to the database thus optimizing the cost and performance. DynamoDB provides BatchWriteItem and BatchGetItem operations for implementing this strategy. Monitoring and Optimization: It is a good practice to monitor and analyze your DynamoDB metrics. By doing this you can understand the performance of the system better and identify performance bottlenecks and optimize them. AWS DynamoDB provides seamless integration with AWS Cloud Watch, which is a monitoring and management system for AWS resources. Using this approach you can periodically optimize your queries by leveraging efficient access patterns. Monitoring the cost of DynamoDB is very important as it can directly impact your organization’s cloud budget. This is essential in order to esure that you are staying within the budget constraints and all the cost spikes are kept in check. Anodot’s Cloud Cost Management capabilities can help you to effectively monitor the cost of your DynamoDB instances. Anodot provides you full visibility into your cloud environment which helps in visualization, optimization and monitoring your DynamoDB usage. The tools provided by Anodot help in ensuring that the DynamoDB instances are not idle and both your allocation and usage are in sync. Periodic Schema Optimization: Periodically the database schema should be reviewed and optimized. The required access patterns for an application change over time and to maintain the efficiency of the system you should optimize your schema and access patterns, this includes — restructuring database tables, modifying indexes etc. System diagram of DynamoDB being used in a serverless setup with AWS Lambda, Amplify and Cognito.

It's never been a better time to be a Managed Service Provider (MSP). Why? Small and medium businesses (SMBs) use cloud-based services for their operations. Eighty-eight percent say they currently use an MSP or are considering one. But many obstacles remain even if SMBs are in high demand for MSPs. They need to keep their profits and revenue growing, focusing on cloud unit economics, customer pricing strategies, and efficient operations. To be the go-to choice for cloud services for SMBs, MSPs must meet customer needs in cloud migrations and financial management. Let's check out how FinOps contribute to successful cloud management and how MSPs can help with this goal. (This blog is just the beginning, get deeper insights in our white paper!) [CTA id="b1547947-bc88-4928-af34-4d0281703d76"][/CTA] Why FinOps so important for modern organizations FinOps is a practice that combines data, organization, and culture to help companies manage and optimize their cloud spend. Furthermore, it brings a holistic approach to cloud financial management and helps organizations maximize their ROI in cloud technologies and services by enabling teams to collaborate on data-driven spending decisions. The relationship between MSPs and FinOps As cloud finance and operations experts, MSPs can help customers optimize cloud costs, standardize operations, and make informed business decisions during their cloud journey. What does that mean? MSPs must be ready to offer FinOps services to customers who wanna level up their cloud financial management game. In a super competitive cloud services market, managed FinOps allows MSPs to stand out and build customer trust. What you need to know for FinOps success for you and your customers Picking the right partner solution is key to nailing your FinOps game, no doubt about it.  Since FinOps is a new approach to cloud management, limited solutions are aligned with its phases and capabilities, despite a tooling landscape with over 100 vendors. Key tool categories to look for when selecting a cloud finance solution When evaluating FinOps platforms, ensure they are designed specifically to deliver managed services. Make sure the FinOps platforms you're considering check all the boxes on this list: Connect to major cloud service providers (AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud) to monitor and manage spend in complex multi-cloud environments. Integration to combine all cloud spending into a single platform is crucial for providing complete multi-cloud visibility and optimizing resources. A FinOps platform to help you successfully implement a robust tagging strategy for every customer and accurately allocate 100% of their costs across all accounts and environments. Automated monitoring for cost anomalies. Cloud cost anomalies are unexpected variations in cloud spending that exceed historical patterns. Assess how effectively the platform enables waste reduction. It should automatically identify and tailor waste reduction recommendations for each customer, including idle resources, rightsizing, and commitment utilization. FYI, Anodot checks all these boxes and then some! Meeting these requirements is integral to FinOps and accelerates cloud-based business value. Understanding where costs are incurred, who generates them, and how they contribute value is key to achieving this goal. Improving margins and customer experiences To make the most of your margins, MSPs must accurately and efficiently invoice customers using a clear pricing strategy. For many MSPs, rebilling can be a real-time suck and eat into already low margins. It gets even trickier with the mixed and unmixed rates from cloud providers, which leads to monthly invoice explanations to clients. Flexible billing solutions for MSPs to embrace Allocate usage and costs to customers. Block out margins and bill customers with adjusted rates Easily add any billing rule and/or credit type Add charges for support and value-added professional services Control usage of high-volume discounts, reallocate SP/RI, and manage credits The importance of real-time visibility into cloud costs Additionally, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) need complete visibility into their usage, costs, and margins. Gain a comprehensive view of customer costs, margins, and usage across the portfolio. Access a detailed billing history with a breakdown of each customer's margin to the Service Provider (SP) and Reserved Instance (RI) level. Justify invoices by analyzing bills from both the partner and customer perspectives. Easily switch between cost views with and without margins. MSPs go further with FinOps practices MSPs who prioritize FinOps make systems more appealing to customers. Why? It demonstrates your commitment as a partner who helps them save money and time in cloud management. Plus, it helps you become a fierce competitor among other MSPs. Remember to find a vendor to help optimize cloud spending while aligning FinOps, DevOps, and finance teams—without adding operational complexity or burdening management. (Hey, that's us!) Looking for a more in-depth analysis of how FinOps can advance MSPs? Check out our white paper!

The public cloud market is expected to grow significantly in 2023, and it's no surprise. Gartner forecasts that end-user spending on public cloud services will rise by 21.7% to a total of $597.3 billion in 2023, up from $491 billion in 2022!  That's why in June 2023, we launched our Anodot 2023 State of Cloud Cost survey to explore the impact of mature FinOps platforms on cloud spend control, time to detect cost anomalies, realized cost savings, easiest-to-use optimizations, and their influence on overall cost savings. In this recap, we'll give you a quick snapshot of what to expect in our report. But we really encourage you to check out our in-depth report or a detailed review for a deeper dive. Top challenges in cloud Making smart decisions on cloud usage and costs relies solely on the ability to extract detailed data. So what are the biggest obstacles the market is currently facing when it comes to getting this crucial information? Let's take a look at the top three! [CTA id="84cdfc87-6078-4012-8859-b72cb2586405"][/CTA]   True Visibility: Our reporting found that having clear visibility into cloud usage becomes a leading issue for our customers. This includes tracking resource utilization, monitoring costs, and optimizing cloud services.  Complex cloud pricing: Dealing with complex, proprietary billing data and different pricing models from providers can make it even trickier to normalize data and reconcile costs.  Complex multi-cloud environments: Take the two big challenges of true visibility and complex cloud pricing, mash them up, and what do you get? Complex multi-cloud environments. Basically, the word "complexity" shows up way too often when we're talking about cloud cost! Cloud waste stats: In our survey, 67% said less than a third of their cloud spending is wasted, up from 56% last year, showing improved FinOps adoption and growing awareness of cloud waste which is good news! The bad news? 20% of respondents remain unfamiliar with the cloud waste they possess. This highlights the need for efforts to address this issue! Learn more on cloud waste costs. Cloud costs are on the rise, but less so for Anodot customers Organizations aspire to effectively manage cloud expenditure, yet struggle to achieve this goal. That's why FinOps is such a life-saver when it comes to cloud costs, companies maximize cloud investments, achieving more with fewer resources. Almost half of Anodot's customers increased cloud spending by over 10% in the past year. But the best part? Over 45% reduced cloud spending through cost optimization, scaling adoption at the same or lower cost with Anodot! And the savings keep coming: Over 60% of customers saved more than 5% of the annual cloud spend through cost optimizations in the last 12 months with us. Additionally, over 40% saved more than 10%, and over 20% saved more than 20%. See more of our cloud saving stats in our report! 💰 [CTA id="84cdfc87-6078-4012-8859-b72cb2586405"][/CTA] Final thoughts:  And that's your preview of our 2023 State of Cloud Cost Survey Report. We covered multiple aspects of cloud spending by using our general market survey and our own data findings.  Notable standouts include: The rise of third-party solutions  The increasing challenge of true visibility into cloud costs Cloud spending and savings are more frequent with Anodot customers. Want more of these findings? I bet you do! Check out our comprehensive report to get the full picture on 2023 cloud costs!