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Overhauling AWS account access with Terraform, Granted, and GitOps

By Mike Julian

Duckbill breaks down their method of accessing thousands of client AWS accounts in a way that preserves ease-of-access, maintains data confidentiality, and still providing all the permissions needed.

A Simple, Yet Effective Cost Optimization Framework

By Mike Julian

When Corey and I started The Duckbill Group in 2019, I sat down with Corey and asked him to braindump everything he looks at when assessing a client’s AWS spend in the first pass. I then came up with a simple framework that’s easy to memorize and still serves us today. Step 1: Turn that […]

Should I Purchase AWS Through a Reseller?

By Mike Julian

There are multiple good reasons to purchase AWS through a reseller — and a couple big reasons why you shouldn’t.

Why Benchmarks Miss The Mark for AWS Spend

By Mike Julian

How much should I be spending on an AWS service? External benchmarks for AWS spending and usage aren’t as useful as you might think.

What’s the Difference Between an EDP and a PPA?

By Mike Julian

What’s the Difference Between an EDP and a PPA?

Tl;dr Nothing, they’re functionally the same thing.

Why Cloud Finance Is Broken and Ineffective

By Mike Julian

Cloud finance is more “cloud” than “finance.” This fundamental misunderstanding leads to very ineffective cloud finance efforts. Here’s how to fix them.

S3 Intelligent-Tiering: What It Takes To Actually Break Even

By Alex Rasmussen

As Cloud Economists, we’re often asked when it makes sense for an object to be in Amazon S3’s Intelligent-Tiering (“S3-IT”) storage class. The answer, as is unfortunately often the case in the world of consulting, is “it depends”. There are two primary considerations before you jump into S3-IT: an object’s access pattern and its size. […]

cloud cost management storytelling

How Storytelling Can Shape Your Cloud Cost Management Strategy

By Jesse DeRose

Storytelling can change the narrative of your cloud cost management strategy by opening up communication and sharing business context across your organization.

cost allocation guide

AWS Cost Allocation Guide: Aggregating and Assigning Cloud Costs

By Jesse DeRose

Understanding AWS spend is a big pain point for companies, but cloud cost allocation can help. In the second part of this series, we’re focusing on what to do with your cloud cost data once it’s generated.

Reserved Instances

Spending Money to Save Money with Savings Plans and Reserved Instances

By Amy Negrette

AWS offers a lot of options to save money by committing to a certain level of spend that you can get without dealing with an Accounting Team. We break down how they work and what strategy works best for your spend.

cost allocation

AWS Cost Allocation Guide: Identifying Your Costs

By Jesse DeRose

At The Duckbill Group, our clients repeatedly tell us the same thing: We need to know why our AWS bill went up. In fact, gaining better visibility into your cloud spend is one of the biggest pain points you will encounter with AWS.  For organizations moving from the data center world, AWS is a completely […]

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