Amazon Cloud Technology's "Start Your Cloud Financial Management Journey" series provides advice on how to start and implement a successful cloud financial management CFM strategy. The three principles of cloud financial management CFM: SEE-view, SAVE-save and PLAN-plan. Next introduced is the fourth stage: RUN-operation.
At this stage, you can understand how cloud financial management CFM is integrated into the business structure through process, strategy and organizational collaboration, which is the key to the success of the cloud financial management journey.
Build a CFM governance framework for cloud financial management
Building applications on the cloud offers a wide range of opportunities for innovation, but requires a governance framework to avoid unexpected unplanned bills, often referred to as cost shocks. Good governance also enables development and operations in the cloud to be as efficient as possible. As the saying goes “time is money”. Here are relevant cloud services and tools to consider:
● Amazon Control Tower – This service helps coordinate and manage multiple Amazon Cloud services while maintaining an organization’s security and compliance needs and simplifying the Amazon Cloud experience. Users can use it to implement preventive or detective controls to monitor compliance across their entire group of Amazon Cloud Accounts. These will give users an extra layer of protection against simple misuse.
● Infrastructure as Code (IaC) – Use this as a deployment method to support code-first environments in the cloud. Reduces the risk of idle account resources (these resources often come from historical manual creation). It allows infrastructure to be reused across multiple environments, speeding up deployment time. Also, it improves agility, so infrastructure can be optimized faster, such as right-sizing EC2 instances, by changing a variable instead of rebuilding.
Establish a clear CFM strategy for cloud financial management
Policies allow setting user rules within an account, which is an effective way to prevent users from doing things they shouldn't. However, if used incorrectly, this can stifle innovation. The key factor in using policies is that users need to be provided with a clear set of rules to guide users in following them, but also have a clear process for validation and enforcement. This ensures developers have the necessary permissions to do their jobs. Here are three types of strategies Amazon Cloud Technologies recommends getting started.
● Label policies – These policies ensure that users within the Amazon Cloud Technology organization label resources consistently and are consistent with the policies defined by the organization. You can define which resources need to be marked and what keywords should be used to mark them.
● Service Control Policy – This is an organizational policy that can be used to manage permissions in an organization. Having these prevents users from creating resources that do not comply with organizational rules. For example, creating cloud resources in unsupported regions, using instance types that do not meet RI/SP requirements, or lacking required tags for tracking.
● IAM policy – defines user roles and what they can access. These are used to control access in almost all accounts. But for CFM, it can be highlighted how they can be used by users within the finance team who need to access billing information. Access to administrative accounts should be restricted as much as possible, but as shown here, a billing role will provide the required access. This user will be able to see billing information, set up payments, and authorize payments. This user can monitor the cost accumulation of the entire Amazon cloud technology service. It is worth noting that Amazon Cloud Technology has recently made some important changes to the Amazon IAM permissions that manage access to Amazon Cloud Technology's billing, cost management, and account consoles, so that it can have a more granular set of permissions for additional control. .
Establish a team with the CFM concept of cloud financial management
Although we automate and standardize accounts, people are key to the success of a CFM-centric build.
● Training, training, training – The key is that everyone speaks the same language about CFM. Investing in employees by educating them on cloud computing fundamentals, tools, and best practices will ensure they are able to build and communicate on cloud computing costs. This way, finance and technology teams can work more closely together on some of the root causes mentioned earlier, including pricing model decisions, mitigating unplanned expense expenditures, and looking ahead to cloud budgeting and planning. The Amazon Cloud Senior Official Account has many Amazon Cloud Technology educational resources, such as courses for Amazon Cloud Technology financial professionals, Amazon Cloud Technology financial management builders, and Amazon Cloud Technology Well-Architect laboratory costs Optimize pillars.
● Establish internal collaboration mechanisms – As everyone’s understanding of the CFM concept of cloud financial management deepens, it will be easy to bring finance, developers and technology stakeholders together. As part of this internal win-win partnership, try setting cost efficiencies and goals across the organization to measure the positive impact of CFM.
● Establish a cost culture—standardize cost awareness in development. As everything is completed, cloud cost management will be instilled into everyday conversations. Bringing the topic of CFM into planning meetings, development cycles, and review meetings will ensure that cost-focused goals are always adhered to.