Tokyo – 30 September 2021 – Alphaus Inc., a leading startup in the Cloud Financial Management (CFM) space in Japan, today announced the launch of its cloud cost optimization tool “Aqua”. It is the company’s second feature launch, following “Wave PRO” which was launched earlier in September.
Alphaus has been providing SaaS tools for collecting, managing, and analyzing cloud cost data, “Ripple” and “Wave”, since 2018. Many Amazon Web Services (AWS) partners in and outside Japan have adopted its SaaS offerings to streamline their billing and reporting process for their end clients. One of the recent trends in the cloud cost management field is “Cloud Financial Management (CFM)”, a variation of the PDCA framework to grasp, analyze, and optimize cloud costs, as well as to plan and track the budget for cloud. Aqua, Alphaus’ latest offering, has advanced features for cloud cost optimization and supports cloud user companies to implement and operate in the CFM framework.
About “Aqua”
Aqua is a SaaS tool that helps you optimize your cloud costs. With Aqua, companies using public cloud services will be able to pursue cost and operational efficiency while achieving their business goals. Aqua recommends actionable items for companies intending to start their cost optimization journey. Besides that, companies experiencing problems in utilizing resources efficiently for each of the multiple AWS accounts they manage, while considering the actual operation status of the resources, will find the recommended actions extremely useful. Aqua currently supports AWS, and its roadmap covers Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform support in the near future.
Features
■ Cost optimization from Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) perspective
Aqua shows how many instances are running at an “on demand” price, whether Reserved Instances (RIs) or Savings Plans (SP) are applied, or whether Spot Instances are running out of the whole active resources. Aqua also recommends efficient ways for purchasing RIs and SP while lowering risks and notifies users on upcoming expiration.
■ Resource optimization from engineer’s perspective
Aqua recommends rightsizing by detecting resource wastage and suggests an optimum instance size so that engineers can take cost-efficient options while keeping the sufficient performance for their systems or products. Aqua’s “scheduling” function displays whether or not a resource is running on a specific day and time while observing the operation status of the instances for a whole week. Reducing the number of instances or stopping them during times of low availability can help companies optimize their cloud cost.
Aqua also shows strength in grasping the cost for multiple accounts and optimizing the whole cloud cost in the organization independent from the AWS Organizations settings. A quick step-by-step wizard will soon be made available in Aqua to help kickstart your cost optimization journey. With Aqua’s intuitive user interface, even users who are not well acquainted with public cloud services will be able to understand how cloud cost optimization works.
