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For enterprises operating at scale on the cloud, costs play a critical role. Costs can make or break your cloud initiatives. Cloud cost management becomes such a pressing matter for enterprises that any neglect in this area could lead your business returns to go downhill, or worse, cause a collapse of the business altogether. Cloud service providers like AWS realized this long back, so they started offering discounts and incentives to companies based on factors like volume, scale, loyalty, etc. These discounts and privileges collectively form what is called the AWS Enterprise Discount Program or simply AWS EDP. The discount program is however complex territory. Enterprises rarely can leverage the full potential of the program without an eligible AWS EDP partner, who can handhold them into negotiating a wholesome contract, availing better discounts, etc.
In today’s article, we will explore how you can get the most out of the AWS EDP by associating with a partner such as CloudKeeper.
What is the AWS Enterprise Discount Program(AWS EDP)?
AWS Enterprise Discount program(AWS EDP) is a cloud pricing program aimed at enterprises to help them gain significant cloud cost savings on AWS. The basic premise of the AWS EDP is that enterprises with substantial cloud usage and long-term commitment to AWS are offered discounts that help them scale and improve their profitability and eventually business continuity. Typically, the AWS EDP program is open to eligible customers who commit to significant annual spending with AWS — typically $1 million or more. It is important to note that an AWS EDP requires a commitment of one to five years.
Who is eligible for the AWS EDP?
Usually, enterprises who qualify for AWS EDP must have spent more than $1 million annually on AWS services and must have a similar projection for future spending. The discount increases significantly for larger annual commitments and term lengths, and the spending thresholds range from $1 million to $50 million annually. The tenure of commitment ranges from 1 to 5 years. Naturally, customers who commit more dollar spending and for a higher term length will move toward the higher discount tier.
Benefits of participating in AWS EDP
There are several benefits associated with the AWS EDP.
1. Discounts: The core benefit of the program is discounts that enterprises can enjoy to achieve better cloud cost savings. Through the EDP, companies can enjoy a flat discount on AWS usage fees, in exchange for a long-term, high-value commitment of usage. Without an AWS EDP, an enterprise would have to pay the same as other smaller companies even if their consumption is significantly high with higher commitments.
2. Better support from AWS: AWS Enterprise Discount Program customers enjoy enhanced collaboration, support, and close partnership with AWS. Being an AWS EDP partner, the organizations demonstrate a strategic and long-term commitment to AWS which unlocks tier-1 benefits and resources.
3. Predicted budgeting: Because AWS EDP requires enterprises to make plans over an extended period, budgeting becomes predictable and stable. There is long-term clarity over where you will be spending your budgets throughout 1 to 5 years, depending on your commitment.
4. Versatile applicability: The AWS EDP discounts are applicable across all major AWS services and transcend regions, processors, and operating systems.
Although the basic EDP plan in itself is a very lucrative option for enterprises, it is not without a set of limitations.
Limitations and challenges of EDP
As mentioned earlier, despite the numerous benefits that AWS EDP offers, enterprises find it difficult to realize the true potential of the program because of certain limitations or challenges associated with it.
1. High commitment levels: Enterprises need to commit to very large spending on AWS to even be eligible for AWS EDP. Getting it right requires a deep understanding of cloud usage patterns and the various options available through the EDP. Accurate cloud cost forecasting and analysis are also crucial, for which enterprises need to be better equipped.
2. Limited discounts: Although in principle the discounts offered under AWS EDP are significantly high, to realize it, companies need to employ the right cloud FinOps expertise along with a deep understanding of the cloud cost optimization ecosystem. Without external support, this seems far-fetched.
3. Contract negotiation: Negotiating an AWS Enterprise Discount Program demands careful planning, strategic foresight, and collaboration. Companies need to leverage market insights, foster open communication with AWS representatives, and emphasize long-term commitments and growth potential, all of which complicate things further.
4. Higher costs of AWS support: AWS requires all organizations opting for EDP to also sign up for AWS Enterprise Support, which can cost up to 10% of your monthly AWS spending. Organizations that aren’t already on Enterprise Support will need to factor the increased support costs into their AWS EDP.
All of the above points certainly make navigating AWS EDP on your own quite a challenging ride.
How can an AWS EDP partner upgrade your plan from good to great?
Selecting the perfect AWS EDP plan requires a highly nuanced view of your resource utilization, AWS service types, target platforms, AWS marketplace apps, savings plan and reservations, etc. Hence, realizing the full value of the AWS Enterprise Discount Program might need a complete paradigm shift in how you go about the agreement in terms of forecasting, using the right analytics, etc. This will ensure that you create favorable negotiation terms for the AWS EDP agreement.
Without the right set of cloud FinOps expertise, enterprises might end up getting lower discounts and higher costs than what was initially expected. An experienced cloud FinOps partner can handhold organizations to calibrate the AWS EDP program for their specific needs and constraints. They could also provide support for the cloud strategy based on the prevailing economic and market trends.
Here are some advantages of working with a partner.
1. Contract Negotiation: One of the most valuable contributions of an AWS EDP partner is in the negotiation phase. They can ensure that your organization’s commitments and requirements are properly aligned with the EDP, negotiate favorable terms, and help optimize the contract to maximize cloud cost savings.
2. Cloud cost optimization: An expert partner generally comes with in-depth knowledge of AWS pricing models, resource utilization, and cloud cost optimization strategies. They can analyze the organization’s usage patterns, identify areas of potential savings, and provide recommendations to optimize costs while maximizing the benefits of the AWS EDP discounts.
3. Resource planning: Resource planning is a critical element of your AWS EDP initiatives. An AWS EDP partner can help with resource planning by analyzing the organization’s workloads, infrastructure requirements, and anticipated growth. They can guide rightsizing instances, utilizing reserved instances effectively, and optimizing resource allocation to align with the EDP commitment levels to achieve maximum cloud cost savings and reduced wastage.
4. Architecture review: The AWS architecture must run optimally in the whole scheme of things. Hence, a partner can review the organization’s infrastructure design and provide recommendations to optimize performance, security, and cost-efficiency. They can modify the architecture to align with AWS EDP discounts, such as better AWS service options, features, or design patterns that offer significant cost advantages.
5. Discounted enterprise support: An AWS EDP partner can significantly bring down the costs of your enterprise support, which otherwise could put a big dent in your overall cloud bill. As the business expands, support costs required to optimize resources and reduce vulnerabilities can cost a pretty penny, bringing you back to square one.
6. Migration and Optimization Tools: An AWS EDP partner can also facilitate specialized tools or platforms that help in migration to AWS or for ongoing optimization. These tools can automate the identification of cloud cost-saving opportunities, monitor resource usage, provide insights, and enable proactive cost management aligned with the EDP program.
Why CloudKeeper EDP+?
As seen above, an AWS EDP partner can prove to be an invaluable addition to your cloud cost optimization journey. Once your mind is made up for associating with an AWS EDP partner, the next stage is zeroing down on the right AWS EDP Partner, to help you strengthen your EDP initiatives. There are certainly several cloud FinOps vendors offering a range of cloud cost optimization solutions, and it is easy to be overwhelmed by choice and might require rigorous planning and discussions to finalize the desired partner.
CloudKeeper, one of the leading companies in this space is a comprehensive cloud cost optimization solution provider.
With more than 12 years of experience in the cloud domain, CloudKeeper has helped 300+ organizations worldwide save more than 20% of their AWS costs. Being an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, CloudKeeper can bring in a wide range of cloud services and exclusive relationships with AWS, to steer the commitment-planning the right way ahead.
CloudKeeper EDP+ offers several benefits right from the contracting stage, providing intelligent and effective contract negotiations which lead to higher discounts and lower annual commitments. Furthermore, CloudKeeper EDP+ provides partner-led Enterprise Support at a lower cost. It also provides a host of value-added services such as free access to CloudKeeper Lens, the cloud cost visibility and recommendations platform, providing daily, weekly, and monthly cost breakups, alerts through emails and Slack, and resource level break-ups. Additionally, CloudKeeper also provides cloud FinOps consulting and support services, AWS Well-architected Reviews, and establishes FinOps KPIs and unit economics.
When you are looking for a one-stop solution for all your cloud cost optimization needs, CloudKeeper guarantees instant cloud savings. Want to learn more?
