I am an SRE from Booking.com and we use IBM Cloudability to view budgets across different AWS budgets, create custom dashboards and set budgets for each of the different AWS projects. Sometimes we also use optimize section to view if we can save on some of the costs and analyze rightsizing. Also we are using forecast for seeing how much the costs will be until the end of the month.
Pros
Creating view to be able to see budgets across different AWS projects
Ability to create and view custom dashboards
Also the ability to set budgets for your projects
Cons
I think the UI/UX needs improvements.If I am using a third party tool instead of AWS Cost Explorer, I would like to have it better than the AWS itself.
It can also be quite slow from time to time to load pages such as budgets and forecasts. The speed can increase as well.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited for more non-technical people who are working across different AWS projects such as Engineering Managers or Technical Product Managers.
For developers or for users that are working on a single AWS project, using AWS Cost Explorer is easier and better in most cases as it provides similar features with a more familiar UI.
User Interface & Usability (Navigation and report customization can be complex or unintuitive)
API & Automation (API documentation is sometimes viewed as not detailed or consistent enough, which complicates automation.)
Exporting, Custom Reporting & Drill-through (When extracting data for deep analysis (e.g. for machine learning, auditing, for internal dashboards), some exports are less usable: missing metadata, limited filtering, or loss of visual structure)
Likelihood to Recommend
Multi-Account / Multi-Cloud Cost Visibility. Without a single pane of glass, it’s hard to reconcile spend. Budgeting & Forecasting Cloudability provides forecasting models, anomaly detection, and budget tracking, enabling proactive course correction.
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
We were analysing and evaluating FinOps tools and IBM Cloudability came as one of the most promising tools in the market. I have research what that tool is about and how it can be used to automate our cloud expenses. A lot of companies thinks that cloud is cheap but without governance it becomes more and more expensive.
Pros
Cost analysis
Triggers and alerts
Cons
The UI can be improved
Charging BU based on their cloud bill
Likelihood to Recommend
Verified User
Director in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
I use IBM Cloudability to automate data collection from cloud providers and classify costs across products.Once this is done, I centralize the information on a public dashboard so people can see their cloud costs and share responsibility across departments.also use the optimization part weekly.In the future, I will create a public dashboard to centralize EKS costs.
Pros
Data collection
Cost classification
Information sharing
anomaly and budget alerts
Cons
Shared cost, Today it is linked to the shared created, not to all resources
Data update, Data takes time to appear on the dashboard
Budget, Does not accept the use of custom metrics that were created
Likelihood to Recommend
It does a good job of removing the burden of FinOps' time in updating provider data and automatically classifying costs. On the other hand, the dashboard customization part is quite limited.
IBM Cloudability is used for checking the consumption of AWS Cloud services for different cloud account. From business point of view the main problem we are dealing with is to optimize the Cloud Account infrastructure.
Pros
Provide a clear documentation and explains the use of the tool.
Provide the insights of how to efficiently manage the cloud account.
Cons
Optimizing the Infra cost.
Provide a way to define the yearly budget on the cloud account.
Likelihood to Recommend
Short time frame for analytics, which affects long-term forecasting and workload fit analysis
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (201-500 employees)
In My Organization, we leverage IBM Cloudability's various dimensions and granular data to get the curated reports to the business stakeholders and app-owners. we leverage the TBM studio to create the dataset which we have processed internally and the same cost numbers are used to create the org-level Apptio BI based Report which is used by all the app owners to get the costing chargeback related details for the given dimension, application for a given period of time. we also leverage CLDY Apptio BIs visualization capabilities to give the insightful reports to the CIO and higher Management related stakeholders on a monthly/quarterly basis.
Pros
Granularity of the Data in IBM Cloudability to create a curated reports for app owners.
Business dimensions to customize the IBM Cloudability reports which would've been difficult to create by using native tools.
TBM capabilities to let the organization to customize the data rather than just simply having the CSP(Cloud-Service-Provider) based inputs.
Cons
Alerts for EKS version upgrade as per the AWS version release calendars, I've already submitted the IDEA on IBM portal, which is accepted, hoping to see this feature in next release.
Unit Economics based parameters addition and view for the users to review how they're doing on per unit basis will definitely add some value.
Cost Sharing related features I've explored to automate the chargeback process has many blockers. I've discussed this with Tim sweetz my Adhoc, I've already shared the blockers to leverage this cost sharing feature. I would like to see an option to customize the cost sharing apart from just proportional, fix, variable type of cost sharing. there should be an option to exclude/include given line item entry for different types of chargeback as in one of the application will get the support cost allocation but it should not be allocated Management charges. such type of customization will definitely help customers to automate their cost allocations using Apptio CLDY.
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Cloudability is well suited for below scenarios: 1. An organization which has a requirement of creating the curated reports for the stakeholders with granularity as low as hourly. 2. An organization which wants to have an alternate Savings Plan/commitment related recommendations which can be referred and trusted rather than blindly trusting the cloud native cloud savings plan/commitment recommendations. 3.creating Apptio BI based visualization for the business stakeholders to get quick insights. According to me as per the current features of Cloudability, scenarios where Cloudability might be less appropriate: 1. An organization which is looking for a tool to automate the Cost sharing/chargeback related process. 2. An organization which is looking for a quick unit economics parameter to understand how they're doing. 3. Rating score for different clouds on the parameters like how the customers is doing in terms of the savings potential and savings relalized, which can be shown to management as a proof of success of FinOps Team/scope for more savings.
We use IBM Cloudability for our AWS Cloud Spend data. We are leveraging the application on a daily basis by now establishing an IT-FinOps Team within the organization. Something that we are trying to accomplish is standardize a single view across all domains of technology.
Pros
Business Mapping for my Applications Team
Rightsizing Recommendations
Ability to change Business Mapping Ownership
Cons
Forecast Capabilities
Explanation of Data Points inside the Application
Likelihood to Recommend
We would like to come up with more proactive cost approaches instead of reactive approaches. For us to be able to push proactive work we need better forecasting capabilities and more insights related to our data
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
