Top Shelf Features: November’s Best from Octo

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” - Peter Drucker

Managing cloud costs has become a critical challenge for many organizations striving to balance scalability with financial efficiency. The complexity of cloud pricing models, hidden non-usage expenses, and the overwhelming volume of reports often leave businesses struggling to extract actionable insights. Without a comprehensive understanding of cost drivers and trends, organizations risk overspending, underutilizing resources, and failing to align their cloud investments with their business objectives.

Enter Octo, a solution designed to revolutionize cloud cost management. Octo transforms your data into meaningful, actionable intelligence by enhancing cost visibility, automating insights, and delivering tailored recommendations. These capabilities empower businesses to move beyond merely tracking expenses to making strategic decisions that drive long-term value and efficiency.

With Octo, our mission is to empower companies to excel in cloud management with innovative features. In this month’s feature edition, we are thrilled to share a comprehensive roundup of features and enhancements that address key pain points, further improving Octo’s effectiveness and efficiency. As Peter Drucker wisely observed, "Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things." This dual focus on operational precision and strategic alignment lies at the core of our innovative features, enabling businesses to optimize resources and achieve success in this cloud era.

This Month’s Power Picks

Here’s a roundup of the features we’re highlighting this November:

🥇Unit Cost Version 3

After the success of Unit Cost Versions 1 and 2, we are thrilled to announce the first feature on our list: the next evolution, Unit Cost Version 3. This upgraded version takes cost analysis to the next level—focusing on enhancing the feature’s comprehension—offering unparalleled insights into unit economics and how they drive smarter, resource-based cost management for your organization.

What stands out in this upgraded feature is the enhanced granularity in resource assignment. This empowers users with precise tracking of individual resource usage, enabling a clearer view of cost drivers and their impact on profitability.

With these enhancements, Unit Cost Version 3 delivers greater accuracy in cost management and actionable insights, helping businesses unlock new levels of efficiency and profitability.

To explore the full details of the enhancements in this version, click here.

🥈Included Non-Usage Costs on Cost Group Visualization

Next on our list is the Inclusion of Non-Usage Costs on Cost Group Visualization. Getting a clear and complete view of your cloud costs is a top priority for our team. These are the reasons why we’ve upgraded Octo to provide transparent and detailed cost displays, ensuring you can trust the information at your fingertips.

Previously, our cost group visualization only reflected usage costs, causing discrepancies with the Cost Explorer display. To fix this, we now include non-usage costs like discounts, credits, refunds, fees, and taxes. Currently available for AWS, we’re working to expand this feature to other vendors soon.

To see this, check out the Cost Group section for the updated visualization and get a detailed breakdown on all your expenses.

Pro tip: For more details, check out the AWS User Guide on lineItem/LineItemType for additional insights!

🥉Cost Explorer Data for Onboarding

A common question during onboarding is whether customers can easily access their data in Octo. While pulling data directly from the Cost and Usage Report (CUR) offers the most accuracy and detail, not everyone has the time to wait when quick access to specific data is a priority.

That is why this third feature on our list has been added to enhance the onboarding process in Octo. To make onboarding faster and smoother, we’ve upgraded Octo to pull data directly from AWS Cost Explorer during account registration—no more waiting around for CUR processing. 

And don’t worry: if CUR data is already available, Octo will prioritize it automatically for the most accurate results!

Report Selection Filter

Navigating and managing cloud-based reports can be a daunting task, especially as reports accumulate rapidly and often lack intuitive organization. Users frequently share feedback about how their productivity takes a hit—not because of the complexity of analysis, but because they spend more time hunting for the right report than actually leveraging its insights.

To tackle this pain point, we’ve enhanced the report selection process with filters. These filter chips enable users to quickly pinpoint specific reports by selecting relevant criteria, making the search process much faster. With this intuitive enhancement, users can save valuable time, focus on analysis, and boost their overall efficiency, transforming a time-consuming task into a seamless experience.

Monthly Insight Report

Here, we have also added Monthly Insight Reports.

Monthly reports are essential for tracking key metrics, identifying trends, and detecting unusual cost increases in your cloud cost management on a monthly basis. They support proactive expense management, prevent budget overruns, and guide resource optimization.

With this in mind, we’ve added a month selection feature to Octo’s Insight Report. Now, you can view your costs for a specific month, just as you would for quarterly and yearly reports. Simply select the new “Monthly Report” option in Step 2 of the report creation process.

Click here to dive into the complete details of this feature.

GCP API Access

You can now set up API access for your GCP project with this new update. This allows you to slash your cloud costs and boost your system’s performance, seamlessly enabling you to receive tailored GCP optimization recommendations directly within Octo.

Helpful Tip: Check out the full details of this update in our Help Center.

GCP Recommendations

Once you’ve set up GCP API access, you can seamlessly view your usage data and rate optimization suggestions directly in the Recommendations tab or section.

We’ve enhanced the details section on the left side of the screen to include a GCP selection, conveniently displayed alongside AWS for effortless navigation and comparison.

Additionally, GCP recommendations are now integrated into our database, giving you instant access to actionable insights designed to help you optimize your cloud usage and reduce costs.

How amazing is that? 😁

We Squashed Some Bugs for You!

As always, we’ve been hard at work squashing bugs to make your experience smoother than ever. Here’s a quick rundown of the fixes:

Cost Group Overview: We’ve resolved the issue with the charts on the overview page, which previously displayed data even when the values were nearly zero.

• Implemented the normalizeValue function to set small decimal values (less than 0.0001) to zero.
• Introduced normalizeThreshold to allow customizable normalization settings.
• Ensured normalization is consistently applied during data conversion and date alignment.

Report Selector: Adjusted the style and updated the translations.

Ready to Take Control of Your Cloud Costs?

Discover how Octo can transform your cloud management with powerful features, actionable insights, and seamless optimization. Explore the latest updates and see how we’re making efficiency and effectiveness effortless. Take the next step in mastering cloud management with Octo today!

Don’t miss out on more exciting updates—visit our website to learn more: www.alphaus.cloud/en. 

Thank you for your continued support! As always, we deeply value your feedback. Stay tuned for more exciting updates coming your way soon—we can’t wait to share what we’ve been working on!

For comments and suggestions, feel free to reach out to us at: support@alphaus.cloud.
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