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AWS launches Cost Categories

Allows users to categorise costs and usage information

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has released Cost Categories, a new feature allowing users to categorise cost and usage information precisely to the organisational structure and cost allocation needs such as teams, cost centers, geography, applications, and more.

Users can also create unique categories and then write rules on which costs belong to each group. 

After defining a unique category, users can view, track, and optimise costs using Cost Categories in the AWS Cost Management suite of products such as AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, and AWS Cost and Usage Report (‘CUR’).

To write category rules, organisations can use AWS Cost Categories rule builder, JSON editor, or application programming interface (API) so that a group of accounts are categorised as a unique unit. Instead of filtering for multiple accounts in Cost Explorer, Budgets, and the CUR, users can simply filter by the single business unit to monitor its spend.

To categorise costs, there are a number of filtering dimensions and operations available. Users can filter by accounts, tags, services, and charge types, so that costs can be mapped based on particular needs. 

Additionally, the rule builder allows users to take advantage of “Is, Is not, Contains, Starts With, and Ends With” operations, so users can flexibly categorise costs.

Once the cost categories have been created with their respective values, they can be viewed across the AWS Cost Management suite of products.

Earlier this month, AWS has formed a public AWS Covid-19 data lake, a centralised repository of datasets related to the spread of the novel coronavirus and associated illnesses.