“The AWS bill went up again and nobody can tell me why.”
Invoices are precise but unreadable. Without spend-driver analysis, a variance takes days to explain and the explanation arrives after the money is spent.
Finance DirectorAWS Cloud Cost Optimization
Your AWS bill should be a decision, not a surprise.
EPI-USE Cloud Cost Optimization is a managed FinOps service for AWS. Agentic AI watches your spend continuously, dedicated FinOps specialists approve every action, and you keep standard AWS rates. No markups, no separate license, no lock-in.
Twelve months under management
IllustrativeManaged spendUnmanaged trend
Effective savings rate27%
Commitment coverage82%
Tag coverage96%
Forecast variance±3%
~95%of clients sign-up to CCO
~99%commitment utilization accuracy
Near-zeroclient churn across the service
$0added to your AWS rates, no separate license
the problem
Cloud gave you speed. It also made spend hard to answer for.
Most organizations do not have a cost problem so much as an answerability problem. If these are conversations you have had in the last quarter, this service was built for you.
“We know there is waste in there. We just do not know where.”
Idle instances, unattached volumes, oversized databases and forgotten environments do not announce themselves. They compound quietly, month after month.
Head of Infrastructure“Every forecast we give the board is a guess.”
Annual budgets built for fixed assets do not fit consumption pricing. Without a usage baseline, forecasting becomes an argument rather than a calculation.
CFO“Nobody actually owns the number.”
With no tagging standard and no showback, spend belongs to everyone and therefore to no one. Optimization stalls because there is no one to decide.
CIO3 to 6
months is how long an unexplained cost trend typically runs before anyone acts on it. The trigger is a budget conversation rather than a monitoring signal. Every one of those months is spend you cannot get back.
what changes
Answerable spend in the first quarter, not the first year.
The sequence is deliberate. Visibility comes before optimization, and Optimization comes before commitments, so you never lock in a baseline you have not cleaned up yet.
By day 30
You can see the number
A FinOps maturity assessment sets the baseline, AWS-native dashboards go live, and tagging is tightened so spend maps to owners.
Maturity benchmark across six areas
Showback by account and environment
Named owner for every cost line
By day 60
The easy money is already back
Low-risk savings are captured first: idle cleanup, rightsizing, and shutting non-production capacity outside working hours.
Unused capacity retired
Workloads matched to real demand
Storage and retention tuned to need
By day 90
Spend becomes predictable
With a clean baseline, commitments are modeled and applied, and a monthly governance cadence keeps the position from drifting back.
Savings Plan and RI strategy applied
Forecast you can take to the board
Monthly review with tracked actions
how it works
One loop, repeated every month, so savings compound instead of eroding.
A one-time cost audit gives you a report. An operating model gives you a position that holds. Ours is aligned with the FinOps Framework and runs on a fixed monthly cadence.
SEE
Make spend legible
AWS-native dashboards, tagging, showback and chargeback, spend-driver analysis and effective rates, expressed in business language rather than line items.
◆AI-powered custom reports
SAVE
Remove waste, then tune
Waste comes out first, then rightsizing, tuning and scheduling. Savings are found across compute, storage, networking, observability and security.
◆Rightsizing and autoscaling
◆Idle and orphaned cleanup
◆Non-production scheduling
PLAN
Forecast, then commit
Budgeting, forecasting and Savings Plan and Reserved Instance advisory aligned to your roadmap, with advance notice before anything expires.
◆Commitment modeling
◆Expiry warning ahead of renewal
◆Unit economics by workload
RUN
Govern and hold the line
Anomaly response, an optimization backlog tracked to closure, and accountability held by application, environment or business unit.
◆Budget thresholds and alerts
◆Monthly review cadence
◆Action tracking to closure
↻Then back to SEE. Every cycle starts from the position the last one left behind.
agentic ai, human-governed
An analyst that never stops watching. An engineer who still makes the call.
AI agents run continuously across your billing and utilization data, so a cost anomaly is a signal within hours rather than a line item at month end. What they never do is change your environment on their own.
01 · Agent
Detect
Agents watch Cost Explorer, the Cost and Usage Report and utilization signals without pause, flagging unusual spend against the pattern your cloud normally follows.
02 · Agent
Correlate and rank
Findings are cross-referenced against tagging, utilization and commitment coverage, then ranked by value and risk, so what reaches a person is already a shortlist.
03 · Human
Approve
A FinOps specialist reviews anything that touches performance, availability or architecture. Nothing is applied to your cloud without a named human approval.
04 · Agent + HUMAN
Apply and track
Approved actions are carried out and tracked to closure, with realized and avoided cost reported back against the action that produced them.
Why the approval gate matters
Fully autonomous cost tooling optimizes what it can measure and misses what it cannot. It does not know that the oversized instance is carrying quarter-end close, or that the idle cluster is a tested failover. Pairing agents with engineers who run AWS environment every day keeps savings from quietly costing you performance or resilience.
◆Agents decide nothing. They detect, correlate and rank. Authority sits with a named specialist.
◆Every change is attributable. You can see who approved what, when, and what it was worth.
◆Risk is stated up front. Recommendations carry a performance and availability assessment, not only a dollar figure.
◆Value is proven, not claimed. Savings are measured against the baseline in your monthly report.
where the savings come from
Six levers, from visibility through to attribution.
Monitoring and observability
Continuous monitoring of spend and utilization, so changes surface as they happen rather than at month end.
Idle resource identification
Surfacing instances, volumes, snapshots and endpoints that nothing is using, with the evidence to support decommissioning.
Storage optimization
Lifecycle policies and backup retention tuned to what the business actually needs to keep.
Rightsizing and reconfiguration
Matching capacity and configuration to real demand, for better price performance rather than a default safety margin.
Commitment planning
The right commitments at the right time, managed for maximum utilization and coverage against a clean baseline.
Custom reporting and showback
Reporting built around how the business is structured, so spend is visible to the people who own it.
what you receive
Cost optimization only sticks when finance, engineering and leadership see the same number.
So each group gets reporting shaped to the decision they actually have to make, drawn from one shared source of AWS-native billing data.
Finance
Needs the number to be defensible.
✓Cost allocation by account, environment and business unit✓Budget variance with drivers explained
✓Forecast detail and accuracy tracking
✓Realized and avoided cost, tied to specific actions
Engineering
Needs cost insight that does not slow delivery.
✓Prioritized optimization actions with effort and risk✓Anomaly investigation with root cause
✓Tag hygiene gaps and how to close them
✓Guardrails and budget thresholds rather than approval gates
Leadership
Needs spend connected to outcomes.
✓Executive summary of spend, savings and risk✓Unit economics: cost per product, client or transaction
✓Cost against performance, resilience and delivery speed
✓Quarterly business review with the plan ahead
how we compare
A SaaS tool tells you what to do. Cloud Cost Optimization gets it done.
FinOps platforms are useful, and we work alongside the ones you already have. The difference is who carries the work after the recommendation appears.
| Capability | SaaS FinOps platform | EPI-USE Cloud Cost Optimization |
|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | Your staff configure, interpret and follow up | Dedicated FinOps specialists own it end to end |
| Scope | Narrow tasks, often commitments alone | Full-stack: compute, storage, network, observability, security |
| Follow-through | Recommendations, then a backlog | Execution and tracking to closure |
| Data source | Tool-specific model of your spend | AWS-native billing data from Cost and Usage Reports and Cost Explorer, combined with actual resource utilization and configuration |
| Cost | An additional SaaS license | No extra cost to EPI-USE AWS clients |
| Accountability | The tool reports, you answer for the number | Monthly review, tracked actions, a named owner |
what our clients say
Trusted to hold the number, month after month.
“EPI-USE has given me the confidence that our AWS cost is what it has to be and that I’m not spending money unnecessarily.”
Eric Anderson, Chief Executive Officer, WebOps“Cloud Cost Optimization from EPI-USE has saved us a considerable amount of time, cost and hassle. They have given us excellent advice and guidance. We particularly like the user-friendly reports, so we can see the savings.”
Robin Szabo, CEO, Szabo Associates“Cloud Cost Optimization from EPI-USE has significantly enhanced our cost management and operational efficiency. Monthly cost analysis reports provide invaluable insight, while timely AWS savings plan recommendations help us optimize costs further.”
Greg Wright, CEO, VantagePointwhat it costs
The usual objection is price. Here there is not one.
The service is funded through the AWS Solution Provider Program, where EPI-USE is your AWS reseller of record. You keep standard AWS rates and we are compensated by AWS, so cost optimization does not need its own business case.
$0
Added to your AWS rates
No markups, no hidden fees and no separate license. Your reporting mirrors your AWS invoices while making them readable.
30 days
Is the whole commitment
A flexible month-to-month engagement with straightforward onboarding and off-boarding. If it stops earning its place, you leave.
1 partner
for finding it and fixing it
Paired with our AWS Managed Services, savings are carried out by the same engineers who run your cloud, so recommendations become completed work.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between cloud cost optimization and FinOps?
Cloud cost optimization reduces spend by removing waste, rightsizing and applying commitment discounts. FinOps is the wider operating model: visibility, accountability, forecasting and governance that connect cloud spend to business value. We deliver both.
Is it really at no extra cost?
Yes. The service is funded through the AWS Solution Provider Program. You pay standard AWS rates with no markups and no hidden fees, on month-to-month terms.
Does the AI make changes to our AWS environment automatically?
No. AI agents detect anomalies and rank savings opportunities continuously, but a FinOps specialist reviews and approves anything that affects performance, availability or architecture before it is applied.
How quickly do clients see savings?
Visibility and tagging are usually in place within the first month. Low-risk savings such as idle cleanup and rightsizing typically land between weeks three and six.
Do we have to move our managed services to EPI-USE?
No. Cloud Cost Optimization runs as a standalone service. It is stronger alongside our AWS Managed Services, because the same engineers who identify a saving can carry out the work.
We already use a FinOps platform. Does this replace it?
Not necessarily. We work with AWS-native billing data and integrate with tooling you already run. Clients often keep a platform for self-service views and use this service for analysis, decisions and execution.
How do you measure success?
By realized savings and avoided cost, forecast accuracy, commitment utilization, tag coverage and spend aligned to business value, reviewed with you monthly.
next step
Find out what your AWS environment is leaving on the table.
A 30-minute review of your AWS spend, tagging maturity, savings opportunities and forecast confidence. No obligation, and no requirement to move anything.
Prefer to look first? Read about AWS Managed Services.
What happens in the 30 minutes
01 · We look at your current position.Spend shape, tagging maturity and where visibility breaks down.
02 · We name the likely levers.
Which of the six would apply to your cloud, and roughly what they are worth.
03 · You get a straight answer.
Including when the answer is that your position is already good and you do not need us.