Alibaba Cloud is the first company to pass the evaluation of "Trusted Cloud Cloud Cost Optimization Tool Capability Requirements", and its cloud-native enterprise IT cost management solution helps enterprises to implement FinOps

Author: Mo Yuan

On May 19, the "2022 Cloud Management and Cloud Network Conference" co-hosted by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (hereinafter referred to as "China Academy of Information and Communications Technology") and the China Communications Standards Association was successfully held through an online live broadcast. At the meeting, the "Trusted Cloud • Cloud Cost Optimization Tool Capability Requirements - Part 1 Native Tools" standard and the first batch of evaluation results were released.

With its product capabilities in cloud cost management, Alibaba Cloud passed all 33 capability indicators with full marks, becoming the first cloud service provider in China to pass this evaluation.

Enterprises use the cloud more and more, and the demand for cloud cost optimization is becoming more and more urgent

In the context of the global digital economy, cloud computing has become an inevitable choice for enterprises' digital transformation. With the deepening of the use of cloud by enterprises, enterprises are faced with the new problem of difficulty in cloud cost management. Cloud cost optimization capability has become the primary requirement for enterprises to use cloud management.

In order to help enterprises choose more suitable cloud cost optimization tools, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology has launched a series of standards called "Cloud Cost Optimization Tools Capability Requirements". Among them, the evaluation object of "Trusted Cloud • Cloud Cost Optimization Tool Capability - Part 1 Native Tools" is the cloud cost optimization tool provided by the cloud service provider. The key inspection capabilities include: cost monitoring capability, cost analysis capability, cost management capability, Optimizing and upgrading capabilities and external integration capabilities.

Alibaba Cloud Releases Enterprise Cloud Native IT Cost Governance Solution - Five Capabilities to Accelerate Enterprise FinOps Process

The cloud cost management solution provides various tools such as budget management, cost analysis, anomaly detection, self-service analysis, cost billing, report management, and cost optimization, and supports cost optimization of many cloud products such as elastic computing, network, and cloud-native container services. , and will continue to enrich and cover all cloud products. Among them, in the cloud-native scenario, Alibaba Cloud Container Service has also released an enterprise cloud-native IT cost management solution to help enterprise cloud-native cost reduction and efficiency increase.

Alibaba Cloud Container Service ranks first with AWS, and is the cloud service provider with the most complete container products in the world [ 1] .

As early as 2006, Alibaba Group began to promote the implementation of cloud-native technology within the Alibaba Group. Sixteen years of experience in cloud-native practice have enabled Alibaba Cloud to better empower enterprises with their thinking and understanding of cloud-native and help enterprises realize IT Information transformation. Alibaba Cloud Container Service has launched an enterprise cloud-native IT cost management solution to help enterprises provide functions such as enterprise IT cost management, enterprise IT cost visualization, and enterprise IT cost optimization in cloud-native cloud scenarios. Alibaba Cloud's enterprise cloud-native IT cost management solution has five core functions:

Core Function 1: Unique Cost Allocation and Estimation Model for Cloud-Native Container Scenarios

In order to solve the problem of inconsistent life cycles between business units and billing units in the container scenario, Container Service proposes a unique cost estimation model that combines billing and metering, and adds cost policies (payment types, savings plans, vouchers, user Consideration of factors such as discounts, bidding fluctuations), allocation factors (CPU, memory, GPU card, GPU memory, etc.), resource form (ECS\ECI\HPC), etc., to achieve cost estimation for the Pod dimension and cost allocation for the proportion of clusters. Through billing analysis, all resource costs of the cluster in a stage are aggregated, and combined with the cost allocation capability of the Pod dimension, a complete cloud-native container scenario cost allocation and estimation model is realized.

Core function 2: multi-dimensional cost insight, trend prediction, root cause drill-down

Supports cost insight in four dimensions: cluster, namespace, node pool, and application (label wildcard matching). The cluster dimension focuses on the distribution of cloud resources, the trend change of resource costs, the ratio of cluster water level to waste, and the trend and cost of cluster costs. Prediction can help IT administrators to accurately judge the trend of cost consumption and prevent scenarios that exceed budget Trend correlation analysis, assist department administrators in cost estimation, drill down to analyze cost waste, and improve department resource utilization; the node pool dimension focuses on resource cost planning and governance, through instance type, unit core time, scheduling water level, and utilization rate Correlation analysis of water levels to assist IT asset managers to optimize resource mix and payment strategies. The application (label wildcard matching) dimension focuses on cost optimization in field scenarios. For example, various upper-layer application scenarios such as big data, AI, offline jobs, and online applications can be used for real-time cost estimation and task-level cost insights through the cost insight of the application dimension. Cost accounting. Through the cost insight of four dimensions, the cost optimization functions and solutions of the whole scene can be supported by data, and the cost reduction and efficiency increase can be carried out with reason.

Core Function 3: Cost Optimization Capability and Solution Coverage in All Scenarios

For the actual business scenarios of different enterprises, Alibaba Cloud Container Service provides resource profile creation, cost optimization capabilities and solutions for all scenarios:

• Elastic scaling [ 2]
• mixed department
• Intelligent resource portrait [3 ]
• Cloud native big data/AI [ 4] **
• Cloud-native workflow [ 5]

In addition, most of the cost optimization strategies of enterprises need the support of business scenarios, and there will be customization and secondary development in many scenarios. Therefore, the cost insight provided by the enterprise cloud native IT cost management solution of Alibaba Cloud Container Service is completely decoupled from the upper-level optimization solution. The cost insight capability of four dimensions can cover the measurement and evaluation of cost optimization methods in all scenarios. .

Core function 4: multi-cluster/multi-cloud/hybrid cloud cost management capability for all types of clouds

Multi-cloud is a new trend for enterprises to migrate to the cloud. There are big differences in the billing models of different cloud vendors. For example, the common annual and monthly payment methods of domestic cloud service providers, the common credit card withholding/postpayment of international cloud service providers, Saving plans and reserved instances supported by some cloud service providers. These all provide more challenges to the cost analysis capability of the multi-cloud cloud pipe plane. Alibaba Cloud Container Service's enterprise cloud-native IT cost management solution provides unified cloud service vendor billing and inquiry access and default implementation, supports mainstream cloud service vendors, and IDC self-built computer room cost data access. Consistent cost allocation and estimation model for cloud-native container scenarios for cost management. Cooperate with the enterprise-level cloud-native distributed cloud container platform ACK One (Alibaba Cloud Distributed Cloud Container Platform) to realize the unified control plane of multi-cloud cloud management and asset management.

Core Function 5: Expert Services for Enterprise Cloud Native IT Cost Governance

Enterprise cloud-native IT cost governance is not only a product capability or solution, but also an evolution of enterprise IT management, organizational processes, and culture in the cloud-native era. Alibaba Cloud provides complete products and expert services covered by FinOps concepts. Assist enterprises to implement cost process governance, cost insight, cost optimization, cost operation, etc., help enterprises to establish a cloud-native overall IT cost platform, and accelerate IT innovation and IT decision-making after enterprises are fully cloudized.

It is foreseeable that in the future, the concept of cloud financial management (FinOps) will be mentioned and adopted by more and more enterprises, and the capabilities and solutions to reduce costs and increase efficiency will also spring up like mushrooms after a rain. However, from the actual situation, the concept of IT cost management in most enterprises has not kept up with the evolution of the architecture, which has brought a greater burden to the cloud-native transformation of enterprises. To fully drive and implement the cloud-native IT cost optimization strategy, the concepts, tools, and processes of cloud-native IT cost governance must come first. Only observable, quantifiable, and measurable optimization solutions can truly prove their value. Alibaba Cloud's enterprise cloud native IT cost management solution [ 6] helps enterprises implement the concepts, tools and processes of enterprise IT cost management, so that enterprises can digitally achieve enterprise IT cost management and optimization in the process of cloud native, becoming a leader in the FinOps field. Practitioners and leaders.

Reference link:

[1] The cloud service provider with the most complete container products in the world

https://developer.aliyun.com/article/763157

[2] Elastic scaling

https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/119099.html

[3] Intelligent resource portrait

https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/413944.html

[4] Cloud native big data/AI

https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/201994.html

[5] Cloud native workflow

https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/157124.html

[6] Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Cloud Native IT Cost Governance Solution

https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/396325.html

Click here to learn about Alibaba Cloud's enterprise cloud-native IT cost management solution!