If you weren't able to join us live for the latest episode of The Keys to AWS Optimization, don't worry - we've got you covered. Steph Gooch and AWS product management lead Rick Ochs shared their top insights and takeaways from June's FinOps X 2024 conference. Not only was it a "Swag Bonanza" for attendees, but a wealth of new capabilities were unveiled to help AWS customers optimize their cloud spend.

Let's dive into the top 5 takeaways from their conversation:

1.Forecasting Maturity on the Rise

A key theme that emerged from the conference was the growing maturity of forecasting practices across the FinOps community. "It was really fascinating how forecasting is getting better across the industry," Rick noted. "Last year, people were like, 'yeah, we do some yearly forecasting,' but this time they're like, 'hey, we do weekly forecasting by Business Unit by app and we roll it up.'" This shift towards more granular, data-driven forecasting reflects the industry's increasing sophistication in managing cloud costs.

2.The Delicate Balance of AI in FinOps

The intersection of AI/ML and FinOps was another hot topic, with discussions around the high costs of AI/GPU instances, as well as the potential for using AI to solve FinOps use cases. As Rick explained, "There was a focus on doing FinOps on AI, and then of course, the counter discussion which is using AI to help solve FinOps use cases, which is actually something we've invested in ourselves." The team emphasized the importance of defining the appropriate use cases for AI, rather than applying it indiscriminately

One of the major product announcements from AWS was the launch of new right-sizing recommendations for RDS instances. As Rick explained, "We now support right-sizing for RDS and this includes MySQL and PostgreSQL. And so now in compute optimizer, when you, if you already have it enabled, you can go there and you'll see recommendations already showing up now to right-size these different RDS instance types." These recommendations are designed to be "bulletproof," taking into account factors like existing Reserved Instances and Savings Plans to ensure safe, accurate optimizations.

Another key announcement was the ability to export data from the Cost Optimization Hub, allowing customers to integrate the recommendations into their own reporting and dashboards. As Rick highlighted, "We heard from customers, 'OK, this is great. You aggregated all of this for me.' One of the neat tricks of hub is that it duplicates the savings amount that's important." The export capability provides customers with the flexibility to customize the data and merge it with other sources, as Rick noted, "where customers already have extensive engineering investment in building cost optimization or cost reporting within their own business structure where they're using their own tools or something like QuickSight."

To help customers quickly get started with the FinOps Foundation's FOCUS specification, AWS introduced a FOCUS dashboard and data export capabilities. As Yuri Pryzkhodko, who leads the FOCUS dashboard project, explained, "The beauty of QuickSight is that you can customize everything, so everyone can build their own dashboards based on either starting from scratch or they can just use our dashboard and build on top." The deployment process is further simplified through CloudFormation templates and a command-line tool, making it easy for customers to set up the FOCUS dashboard and start leveraging the data. Zach Erdman was on hand to take us through the different option on the FOCUS views.

You can catch the full episode on-demand on the AWS Keys to Optimization YouTube channel. Tune in and get ready to level up your cloud cost optimization game:

FinOpsX Announcements | The Keys to AWS Optimization | S10 E6