In the ever-changing landscape of cloud computing, managing costs efficiently is a critical concern for organizations leveraging cloud service. Cloud cost management tools provide indispensable recommendations to help optimize infrastructure and achieve high cost efficiency.

Platforms such as AWS Compute Optimizer and AWS Trusted Advisor, along with similar tools from other cloud providers, deliver actionable insights that enable businesses to streamline their cloud usage. These recommendations focus on various aspects of cost optimization , including rightsizing resources, utilizing reserved instances (RIs) and Savings Plans, eliminating unused resources, and transitioning to more economical storage tiers.

By adopting these strategies, organizations can significantly enhance their cloud performance while maintaining robust security and reducing overall expenditure.

One of Octo’s best features is its ability to deliver actionable recommendations based on your usage data. These recommendations are designed to help you identify underutilized resources that can be eliminated, as well as discover more cost-effective alternatives, ensuring you optimize your cloud usage and rescue your expenses. Moreover, Octo consolidates recommendations from all your cloud vendors into a single platform, providing you a comprehensive view to streamline decision-making and enhance cost-efficiency.

You can find Octo’s recommendations in the side navigation bar. To do this:

Below is the sample image for the Recommendations section in Octo.

Usage optimization focuses on managing when and how cloud resources are used to prevent unnecessary costs through actions such as deleting, stopping, rightsizing, or archiving resources.

In Usage Optimization, you can also filter the information displayed in the table. You can start by choosing a cost group to display, which by default will be set to All Accounts. Additionally, you can select the vendor and services.

Currently, Octo supports AWS and GCP, with plans of including Azure in the future. You can further filter the services by categories, allowing you to choose whether to focus on those that can be migrated, stopped, or upgraded.

Rate optimization focuses on identifying the best pricing options for services used, such as Reserved Instances (RI), Savings Plans (SP), and Spot instances, or negotiating with cloud service providers (CSPs) to secure discount agreements.

In rate optimization, most of the previously mentioned filters are available, but additional options are also provided. You can still choose the cost group, vendor, and services, but since the focus is on rates, there are options like models, terms, and payment options.

The 'rate optimization models' refer to whether the recommendation you want to view is for Reserved Instances (RI) or Savings Plan (SP). If you select RI, you can choose between standard or convertible as an offering class, select a term (1 or 3 years), and choose a payment option (all upfront, partial upfront, or no upfront). For SP, you can select the type (Compute SP, EC2 Instance SP, and Sagemaker SP), as well as the term and payment option.

Octo also displays recommendations beyond usage and rate optimization, categorized as "Others." These recommendations aim to enhance your overall cloud cost management strategy by offering additional insights and suggestions tailored to your specific needs.

Just like the other types of recommendations, you can filter these by cost group, vendor, and services, ensuring that you receive targeted and relevant advice to optimize your cloud resources effectively. This comprehensive approach helps you make informed decisions, reduce unnecessary expenditures, and improve the efficiency of your cloud operations.

Currently, Octo does not support the direct implementation of these recommendations, requiring manual execution instead. However, plans are underway to add this feature in the future. In the meantime, you can mark recommendations as executed to maintain a record in the Optimization History, indicating that the recommendations have been implemented.

To do this, simply select the recommendations you have applied and click ‘MARK AS EXECUTED’. This will help you keep track of your optimizations and ensure a comprehensive history of changes made.

A crucial feature in cloud cost management is its ability to enhance transparency, accountability, and decision-making. This feature helps effectively track, analyze, and optimize cloud spending, leading to more efficient cloud usage and lower overall costs.

It serves as a record or log of activities, actions, and recommendations aimed at reducing cloud expenses, providing valuable insights into how cloud resources have been optimized.

By maintaining detailed logs and reports, organizations can better understand their cloud usage patterns, identify cost-saving opportunities, and make informed decisions to ensure their cloud infrastructure is both cost-effective and aligned with business goals.

Presenting here is the Octo’s Optimization History Dashboard.

This entire view provides a quick comparison and insight into which recommendations are worth executing to reduce your costs and increase your savings.

Currently, the recommendations we display in Octo are sourced from AWS, GCP, and from Octo itself.

These recommendations, provided by AWS, are designed to help you identify optimization opportunities within your cloud environment. By analyzing your usage patterns, resource configurations, and costs, AWS generates actionable insights to enhance efficiency and reduce expenses in cloud cost management.

These insights enable your system to detect underutilized or over-provisioned resources, such as EC2 instances and RDS databases. They suggest practical actions like right-sizing resources, shutting down unused assets, or switching to cost-effective alternatives such as Spot Instances or Savings Plans.

This tool provides a range of cost optimization recommendations, seamlessly fetched and displayed in Octo. These include actions like purchasing Reserved Instances or Savings Plans and rightsizing or terminating EC2 instances. With this integration, organizations can efficiently manage AWS cloud costs while ensuring the performance and scalability of their cloud infrastructure remain intact.

Please do take note that when purchasing RI and SP, it is essential for users to select a payment option and term that align with their specific needs.

Here is the list of the recommendations offered by Cost Explorer.

This feature within AWS Billing and Cost Management helps users identify and prioritize opportunities to reduce AWS expenses. It consolidates recommendations from various AWS services, such as Compute Optimizer, into a single, easy-to-use dashboard. Octo seamlessly retrieves this data from the Cost Optimization Hub using the AWS API and displays it within Octo, eliminating the need to access the AWS console directly.

Please note: to receive recommendations from the Cost Optimization Hub, this feature must first be enabled. Octo will automatically enable it once API access is configured. After activation, AWS typically requires 1 to 3 days to generate recommendations. If the Cost Optimization Hub was previously enabled, recommendations should already be available.

Visit our Recommendation Hub to learn more about these recommendations.

AWS Trusted Advisor is a service from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provides real-time guidance to help users provision and manage their resources in alignment with AWS best practices. It offers tailored recommendations across key areas, including cost optimization, performance, security, and fault tolerance. Octo integrates with the Trusted Advisor API to retrieve and display recommendations specifically focused on cost optimization, giving users actionable insights to manage expenses more effectively.

Please note that Trusted Advisor recommendations are available only to users subscribed to AWS Business, Enterprise, On-Ramp, or Enterprise Support plans.

See the list of recommendations by Trusted Advisor under the optimization category that are supported by Octo.

Similar to AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) also provides recommendations designed to help users optimize their cloud infrastructure. GCP’s recommendations are organized into categories such as cost optimization, performance, reliability, security, and sustainability, giving users a comprehensive view of potential improvements.

In Octo, cost optimization recommendations from the GCP Recommendation Hub will be displayed in the Recommendations section. This enables users to easily spot savings opportunities and optimize resource allocation, supporting their financial and operational objectives.

Check out the list of GCP recommendations from the Recommendation Hub in our documentation.

Octo provides a robust cost optimization recommendation feature specifically designed to help AWS users reduce their cloud spending effectively. Leveraging proprietary logic and advanced criteria, Octo analyzes your AWS resources to identify opportunities for optimization, including rightsizing instances, migrating to more efficient configurations, and eliminating underutilized resources. Unlike traditional tools, Octo delivers personalized recommendations tailored to your unique usage patterns and business requirements. Supporting a wide array of AWS services, Octo ensures you receive comprehensive insights to uncover cost-saving opportunities.

With Octo, you can effortlessly take actionable steps to enhance your cloud cost efficiency and drive greater value from your AWS investments.

To know more about these recommendations, visit our documentations.