Show HN: I built a service to help companies save on their AWS bills • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: I built a service to help companies save on their AWS bills

#21

Post by oars » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

kavehkhorram wrote: post #18

petargyurov wrote: post #6

Maybe I'm missing the point, but why wouldn't a company hire a contractor to do the same thing you do for a one-off fee? I just don't see why this is a subscription model. Of course, a company's usage will change over time, but I don't see how that's worth the monthly fees advertised. > optimization process should be done automatically through a series of sophisticated algorithms > ...then it's passed to a human that…

Hi petargyurov, great question! Every recommendation is first produced by a model. Then for a recommendation, we add a human to the cycle that understands the client's infrastructure and adjusts the confidence score accordingly. The savings are then shown on a user's dashboard - alongside an analysis report. When we onboard a new customer, we spend time understanding their infrastructure plans. Then we keep that info…

You missed the first question:

> why wouldn't a company hire a contractor to do the same thing you do for a one-off fee? I just don't see why this is a subscription model

This is something I am curious about as well.

Re: Show HN: I built a service to help companies save on their AWS bills

#22

Post by kavehkhorram » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

emersonrsantos wrote: post #2

Doesn’t AWS compute optimizer does the same? What’s the difference?

Hi emersonrsantos,

Good question!

With Usage, every enterprise customer gets their own fine-tuned model. AWS compute optimizer throws the same standardized model to all of their users. I can't compare our models to the ones AWS compute optimizer uses - but I can tell you that we've never had a complaint about a customer taking a recommendation and regretting it later on.

Additionally, we have humans look over every recommendation to ensure quality. Typically we have an understanding of a customer's cloud infrastructure before they sign up for Usage - and the human in the loop uses that information to grade recommendations produced by Usage's models.

Re: Show HN: I built a service to help companies save on their AWS bills

#23

Post by kavehkhorram » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

oars wrote: post #21

kavehkhorram wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi petargyurov, great question! Every recommendation is first produced by a model. Then for a recommendation, we add a human to the cycle that understands the client's infrastructure and adjusts the confidence score accordingly. The savings are then shown on a user's dashboard - alongside an analysis report. When we onboard a new customer, we spend time understanding their infrastructure plans. Then we keep that info…

You missed the first question: > why wouldn't a company hire a contractor to do the same thing you do for a one-off fee? I just don't see why this is a subscription model This is something I am curious about as well.

Our recommendations break into two categories:

1. Annual recommendations (Reserved Instances, Savings Plans) Sure, if a company only wants these recommendations - they can bring on a contractor once per year to do these changes. This is the one-off fee type contractor the poster is talking about

2. Continuous recommendations (Rightsizing, Spot Management) These recommendations are typically not something you could do once and be done. Rightsizing (which includes zombie instance detection) can happen through time. Spot Fleet management is also a continuous play - spot prices fluctuate and Usage's strategy works hard to maximize savings while minimizing downtime.

You might ask, how does this compare to hiring a contractor full time?

If you're a midsized company, Usage charges $5k/month (or $60k/year). A fulltime contractor in SV would likely be at least $100k/year and that doesn't factor in the number of billable hours (through interviewing) it would take to find someone who knows 50%+ of all of AWS' features.

Re: Show HN: I built a service to help companies save on their AWS bills

#24

Post by kavehkhorram » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

jakozaur wrote: post #9

How do you compare to CloudHealth? I do cost optimisations for living and though there are a lot of tools, most of them are niche and doesn't scale well. For generic purpose I tend to use CloudHealth, but still we write a lot of scripts to do some custom managment.

AFAIK, CloudHealth is mostly about cost management and analytics. Usage takes it a step further and also shows recommendations.

I would be interested in hearing about your experience with cost optimization. My email is kaveh@usage.ai if you'd like to reach out.

Re: Show HN: I built a service to help companies save on their AWS bills

#25

Post by aka1234 » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 1:45 PM UTC

musicale wrote: post #3

If it works then I would expect Amazon to acquire it so they can break it.

Kinda like how Amazon acquired CloudEndure, improved the service, and lowered cost by 80%? They really broke that. /s

Full disclosure: I work at AWS. Not on CloudEndure or anything relating to pricing. But come on.

Re: Show HN: I built a service to help companies save on their AWS bills

#26

Post by kavehkhorram » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 1:47 PM UTC

guessmyname wrote: post #5

For an (offline) alternative, check out → https://github.com/similarweb/finala (written in Go) I started using Finala a couple of months ago out of experimentation, it works well, but you need to tweak the configuration a lot to help the tool understand your infrastructure, spending habits and normal usage. My colleagues are very happy with the results, we started saving ±1.8k per month, which is pocket change for ou…

Thank you for posting an offline alternative!

I'd say the biggest difference is that we handle everything (so that engineers can focus on actual product dev) and also offer white-glove service to all of our customers. For midsized and up, we offer 24/7/365 access to an engineer for any questions or problems with the Usage dashboard.

Re: Show HN: I built a service to help companies save on their AWS bills

#27

Post by kavehkhorram » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

pelasaco wrote: post #11

petargyurov wrote: post #6

Maybe I'm missing the point, but why wouldn't a company hire a contractor to do the same thing you do for a one-off fee? I just don't see why this is a subscription model. Of course, a company's usage will change over time, but I don't see how that's worth the monthly fees advertised. > optimization process should be done automatically through a series of sophisticated algorithms > ...then it's passed to a human that…

imagine companies where all new products are being deployed on AWS, and for every new project, you submit the suggested AWS infrastructure to them for an evaluation.

That's the vision :)

Re: Show HN: I built a service to help companies save on their AWS bills

#28

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

kavehkhorram wrote: post #23

oars wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the first question: > why wouldn't a company hire a contractor to do the same thing you do for a one-off fee? I just don't see why this is a subscription model This is something I am curious about as well.

Our recommendations break into two categories: 1. Annual recommendations (Reserved Instances, Savings Plans) Sure, if a company only wants these recommendations - they can bring on a contractor once per year to do these changes. This is the one-off fee type contractor the poster is talking about 2. Continuous recommendations (Rightsizing, Spot Management) These recommendations are typically not something you could do…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I built a service to help companies save on their AWS bills

#29

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

kavehkhorram wrote: post #22

emersonrsantos wrote: post #2

Doesn’t AWS compute optimizer does the same? What’s the difference?

Hi emersonrsantos, Good question! With Usage, every enterprise customer gets their own fine-tuned model. AWS compute optimizer throws the same standardized model to all of their users. I can't compare our models to the ones AWS compute optimizer uses - but I can tell you that we've never had a complaint about a customer taking a recommendation and regretting it later on. Additionally, we have humans look over every r…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I built a service to help companies save on their AWS bills

#30

Post by dave_sid » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

I like this. What a great idea for a consultancy. There must be so many organisations that are paying way more than they need by not tweaking each aws service they are using. Anything from using the wrong S3 storage type to using ECS when they could switch to Fargate.