David Y.

David Y.

David Y.

YEAR:

2025

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AWS

AWS

AWS

Cloud Cost Monitor

Cloud Cost Monitor

Cloud Cost Monitor

Project overview.

As AWS customers increasingly prioritize cost optimization to justify cloud migrations and modernizations, they face significant friction due to the limitations of traditional pricing tools. Previously, the public pricing calculator relied on generic on-demand rates, failing to account for a customer’s personalized discounts, existing commitments like Savings Plans, or actual usage patterns. This lack of precision often resulted in inflated estimates, leading to stalled IT projects, budget overruns, or a reliance on expensive third-party and home-grown workarounds. To modernize with confidence, customers require a streamlined solution that provides accurate, personalized cost projections to secure budgets and justify architectural changes.

pain point.

“I’m constantly explaining to finance why the forecasted cost is higher than what we actually pay—it creates confusion and slows down approvals.”

“It’s frustrating that we have to resort to third-party tools just to get a decent estimate—we shouldn’t have to pay extra for that.”

“The current tool doesn’t help us model cost savings from using newer instances or relocating workloads to cheaper regions—it’s a missed opportunity.”

“We can’t make confident cloud investment decisions because the pricing calculator doesn’t reflect our actual discounts or usage patterns.”

“The lack of personalized pricing in the calculator creates uncertainty, and that uncertainty kills momentum for innovation and modernization.”

Phase 1
Enters AWS Billing & Cost Management

  • Seeking greater visibility and control over AWS usage and expenditures to better manage cloud costs.

  • Needing personalized, commitment-aware monitoring to reflect actual discounts and prevent budget overruns.

  • Frustrated by unexpected billing spikes and inaccurate forecasts caused by a lack of cost transparency.

Phase 2
Create Cloud Cost Estimate

  • Forecasting and Budgeting: start by building an estimate to ensure the cloud budget is managed with maximum precision.

  • Modernization Discovery: explore different application modernization paths to identify where user can drive the most significant cost savings.

  • Commitment Simulation: model various "what-if" scenarios to see how new Savings Plans or Reserved Instances would lower the bottom line.

  • Business Case Validation: synthesize these scenarios into a final migration forecast to secure stakeholder buy-in and justify the investment.

Phase 3
Import Cloud Usage

  • Streamlining Data Entry: choose to import real usage data rather than inputting it manually to reduce effort and ensure a high-accuracy baseline.

  • Grounding in Reality: base the simulations on actual deployments, allowing me to model optimizations for existing workloads instead of hypothetical scenarios.

  • Identifying Cost Drivers: leverage historical patterns to pinpoint which services or regions contribute most to the current spend before planning architectural changes

Phase 4
Model & Modify Usage

  • Analyzing Current Spend: User examines historical data across services and accounts to establish a baseline understanding of existing costs.

  • Simulating Growth: User adds new workloads and scales resources to model the financial impact of launching applications or increasing traffic.

  • Optimizing Workloads: User adjusts service volumes and upgrades instance types or regions to uncover potential savings and refine modernization strategies.

Phase 5
Analyze Estimate

  • Reviewing Cost Summaries: User reviews projected spend across services and regions to quickly identify major cost contributors for stakeholders.

  • Aligning Stakeholders: User shares estimates with finance and leadership to ensure migration and modernization plans align with budget goals.

  • Evaluating Commitments: User assesses how Savings Plans and Reserved Instances reduce long-term costs to validate the financial benefit of predictable usage.

  • Converting Insights to Action: User leverages estimate data to plan resource optimization, such as eliminating idle instances or shifting to cost-effective regions.

Phase 6
Optimize Cloud Spending

  • Validating Modernization: User leverages estimates to justify infrastructure upgrades and modernization efforts with data-backed financial forecasts.

  • Refining Purchasing Strategy: User compares various pricing models and service options to select the most cost-effective path for long-term savings.

ux requirements.

Creating the Cloud Cost Monitor experience centered around empowering users to effectively track and manage their cloud spending with minimal friction. The design process prioritized clarity and usability, simplifying the setup into intuitive, step-by-step flows that guide users through setting budgets, defining thresholds, and selecting key dimensions such as services, accounts, tags, and cost categories. Recognizing the limited attention users can give, the interface was streamlined to reduce cognitive load by chunking information, surfacing only the most relevant insights, and ensuring responsive interactions. This approach enabled users to quickly create cost monitors, receive timely alerts, and confidently manage their cloud expenses without being overwhelmed.

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“I’m constantly explaining to finance why the forecasted cost is higher than what we actually pay—it creates confusion and slows down approvals.”

“It’s frustrating that we have to resort to third-party tools just to get a decent estimate—we shouldn’t have to pay extra for that.”

“The current tool doesn’t help us model cost savings from using newer instances or relocating workloads to cheaper regions—it’s a missed opportunity.”

“We can’t make confident cloud investment decisions because the pricing calculator doesn’t reflect our actual discounts or usage patterns.”

“The lack of personalized pricing in the calculator creates uncertainty, and that uncertainty kills momentum for innovation and modernization.”

testimonial.

The STONE MIND project is a stunning, textured centerpiece in our portfolio, with every detail of the 'stone head' meticulously crafted.

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