This session is intended for customers who have or will have hundreds or thousands of instances running on AWS, across several business units or cost centres. We will discuss the changes required as you grow on AWS and the mechanisms that enable a lean cost optimisation culture, with a focus on billing visibility and cost allocation. This session features Atlassian and the lessons learned on their journey to scale. Attendees will be provided with several online resources that will help their organisation be set up for cost optimisation at scale. Speakers: Peter Shi, Commercial Architect Michael Fuller, Principal Systems Engineer, Atlassian

1. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Peter Shi
Commercial Architect
Amazon Web Services
Level 300
Cost Optimisation at Scale
Michael Fuller
Principal Systems Engineer
Atlassian
© 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
How Best Practice Cloud Management Changed with
Scale at Atlassian

2. Today’s Agenda

3. Today’s Goal, You Know How to Get Here:

4. Today We Will Not Be Covering:
• Technical how-to on identifying and executing
on areas of cost savings
• Designing for cost (e.g. serverless architecture)
• Organisational Change 101
(e.g. stakeholder communication management)

5. Executive
Sponsorship
Experiment
Education
Hybrid
Operations
Program ROI
and Plan
Cloud-First
Strategy
Organisational
Change
Making it Real
Elements of a Successful Cloud Journey

6. Let’s Set the Scene…

7. Traditional IT Finance & Procurement is Suited
to Large Infrequent Purchases
A wild large
purchase
appears!
Finance &
Procurement
Engineering
$

8. Let’s Go Into the Cloud…

9. Engineering is Kicking Goals!

10. Procurement is in a New and Unfamiliar World

11. Management Notices & Starts Asking Questions

12. How Do We Get to Here?

13. How Has Cost Management Evolved Over
Time at Atlassian?
ToolsProcessesPeople

14. People & Processes
1. Initially each team looked after their own
spend/budget
2. Formed a new team
(Cloud Engineering)
3. CE works with Finance & Procurement
4. CE works with Engineering leads
How Has Cost Management Evolved Over
Time at Atlassian?

15. 1. Initially no tooling
2. Implemented basic tooling
3. Grew to need SaaS tooling
4. Building out in-house tools
Tools
How Has Cost Management Evolved Over
Time at Atlassian?

16. In-house Tooling Can Be Simple & Lightweight
Cost and Usage
Report in S3
Athena
SQL in Amazon
Console

17. Cost Allocation Comes Up Often as a Question
Cost allocation is a major step towards a lean culture …
Q: How does Atlassian do cost allocation / chargeback and
what advice do you have for those starting out?

18. Tagging is Crucial to Enable
Billing Breakdown and Cost Allocation
bit.ly/co17_tag

19. How Do You Ensure Standardised Tags?
AWS Config + Lambda can help identify & deal with
misspelled or untagged resources
bit.ly/co17_tag2

20. Allocate Cost By Tag (Except Where You Can't)
$
$
$
$ $?
Business Unit 1
Business Unit 2
Untaggable
or Untagged
Unallocated cost

21. $
Default Cost Centre are Assigned to Accounts
Business Unit 1
BU’s now care about proper tagging & allocation!
$?
Unallocated
cost
Costs always
have an
Account ID
Allocate a default
cost centre for
each acct. ID
$
Business Unit 2

22. #untaggable
<8%
Only a Small % of Cost is Untaggable

23. Consistency Of Cost Allocation Across
Reports Is Important
Report A
Report B
3rd party reporting
Raw billing data

24. We Could Build Allocation Logic Into Reports…
Report A
Report B
3rd party reporting
Raw billing data

25. A Better Approach is to Modify the Source
Report A
Report B
3rd party reporting
Raw billing data

26. Modify Raw Billing Data to Generate Golden Data
Processing…
Assigning default
cost centers,
fixing common
misspellings, etc.
Raw billing data
Processed Golden
billing data

27. Golden Data Enables Consistent & Easy Reporting
Report A
Report B
3rd party reporting
Golden billing data

28. Results So Far…
$
100% cost allocation
establishing ownership
and enabling a
lean cost culture
Golden data and
accurate reporting
enabling quick insights
Consistent reporting
enabling a common
and familiar language
between teams
…

29. How do we get there?
What are the mechanisms that will help?

30. Mechanisms that Should Change with Scale
IncreasingScale
Large scale
$150k p.m.
Just starting
Central
Cloud Team
Cost explorer
3rd Party Tools +
DIY tooling +
reporting automation
Reporting
and tools
Incl. 3rd
party
AWS Support
Business/
Dev. Support
Enterprise
Support

31. Mechanisms That Will Always Have an Impact
Regardless of Scale
Executive support
and push for cost
efficiency
Open comms. between
procurement/finance and
engineering
Measure initiative impact
and tell the story to
promote Executive support
Tagging
(add BU tag as you grow)
Ongoing education Use partners and/or
Proserve to help
$
…

32. bit.ly/co17_group
Cost Optimisation Community Interest Group
CO

33. Online Video Resources
Cameras may be handy

34. A Cloud Guru Course on AWS Cost Control
~5 hours of high density AWS cost management content suitable for both
technical and non-technical audiences
bit.ly/co17_course

35. Video Resources (found on YouTube)
• re:Invent 2015 | (ISM402) Cost Optimisation at Scale
bit.ly/co17_video1
• re:Invent 2016 | (ARC310) Cost Optimising Your Architecture:
Practical Design Steps For Savings
bit.ly/co17_video2
• re:Invent 2014 | (ARC201) Cloud-Native Cost Optimisation
bit.ly/co17_video3
• re:Invent 2015 | (ISM309) Efficient Innovation:
High-Velocity Cost Management at Netflix
bit.ly/co17_video4

36. Online Tooling Resources

37. Cost Optimisation Monitor
Easy to set-up AWS tool for billing visibility
bit.ly/co17_monitor

38. 3rd Party Tooling Available

39. Thank you!
p.s. we love surveys!