Analyze resource costs by SKU

Asset Library / FinOps Use Cases / Analyze resource costs by SKU

Context

Understanding the highest costing SKUs can help multiple personas in an organization achieve goals, such as:

Contract negotiation: Procurement teams can use this information to negotiate the best possible discounts with cloud providers.
SKU-based forecasting: Product and Finance teams can use this information to forecast future demand for SKUs and plan accordingly.
High unit-cost cleanup: FinOps teams can use this information to identify and prioritize SKUs with high unit costs, which can be optimized or eliminated to reduce overall cloud spend.

FOCUS Columns

Provider
Charge Period Start
Charge Period End
SKU ID
SKU Price ID
Pricing Unit
List Unit Price
List Cost
Pricing Quantity
Effective Cost

FOCUS SQL Query

SELECT
  ProviderName,
  ChargePeriodStart,
  ChargePeriodEnd,
  SkuId,
  SkuPriceId,
  PricingUnit,
  ListUnitPrice,
  SUM(PricingQuantity) AS TotalPricingQuantity,
  SUM(ListCost) AS TotalListCost,
  SUM(EffectiveCost) AS TotalEffectiveCost
FROM focus_data_table
WHERE ChargePeriodStart >= ? and ChargePeriodEnd  < ?
GROUP BY
  ProviderName,
  ChargePeriodStart,
  ChargePeriodEnd,
  SkuId,
  SkuPriceId,
  PricingUnit,
  ListUnitPrice
ORDER BY
  ChargePeriodStart ASC
LIMIT 100

Related KPIs

Percentage of Normalized, Queryable Data within Repository

Calculate percentage of normalized and queryable data in data warehouse, repository, or similar, vs Accounts Payable Invoice.

The main output of this capability is a data repository of normalized, queryable data from which reporting, analysis, and visualization of cloud cost and usage will occur. This KPI is about organizing the foundation for insights and making it accessible for cost-insight products.

Formula

Spend included in queryable data warehouse (or similar) / Total Cloud Spend

Data Sources:

CSP Billing Data
Data Warehouse

Related Capabilities

Reporting & Analytics

Percentage Resource Utilization

Measure of cloud compute resource utilization, e.g. Compute (EC2), Block Storage (EBS), or Object Storage (S3).

For each resource type, calculate the amount of resources utilized as a percentage of the the total capacity allocated. Resource utilization rates should be considered over time, and as compared to the expected utilization based on the workloads running. Practitioners should also consider average vs. peak utilization rates.

Formula

Compute: CPU Utilization Rate (total consumed quantity in core-hrs or cpu-hrs / Total CPUs Allocated), Memory Utilization Rate (Total Usage in GB / Total Memory Allocated)

Volumes: Throughput Utilized / Throughput Provisioned, IOPS Utilized / IOPS provisioned, Storage Utilized / Storage Provisioned (per volume)

Data Sources:

Monitoring Tools

Related Capabilities

Workload Optimization

Cloud Sustainability

Related Assets

Workload Optimization Library

A collection of resources to help identify types of cloud cost waste by service provider, including links to additional tools.

How to Optimize Cloud Usage

Use this paper to better understand what usage optimization is and what to consider if your organization wants to maximize the value of the cloud.

Percentage of Legacy Resource

Measure of the percentage of resources running on ‘modern’ types (e.g. instance types, volume type).

In general, cloud service providers come out with modern resource types that often come with improved price/performance.

NOTE: Always compare the actual cost impact of a migration vs. level of effort required. Not all modernizations will result in cost savings. Always consider your active reservations before migrating workloads.