In this course, you will learn how finance professionals can use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to adopt cloud in a fiscally responsible manner. You will gain foundational knowledge to help you manage, optimize, and plan cloud spend. You will learn how to influence your organization’s builders to be more accountable and cost conscious. Finally, you will consider how you can use AWS to innovate in your finance organization.

• Course level: Fundamental
• Duration: 2 days

Activities

This course includes presentations, activities, demonstrations, videos, assessments, and group exercises.

Course Objectives

In this course, you will learn to:

• Define cloud business value
• Estimate costs associated with current and future cloud workloads
• Use tools to report, monitor, allocate, optimize, and plan AWS spend
• Optimize cloud spending and usage through pricing models
• Establish best practices with Cloud Financial Management (CFM) and Cloud Financial Operations (Cloud FinOps)
• Implement financial governance and controls
• Drive finance organization innovation

Intended audience

This course is intended for enterprise finance stakeholders who want to learn how to maximize cloud business value, use CFM best practices, and help finance teams innovate with AWS.

Prerequisites

We recommend that attendees of this course have:

• Cloud Computing and AWS from the digital version of AWS Cloud for Finance Professionals
• AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials
• AWS Cloud Essentials for Business Leaders 

Course Outline

Day 1

Module 1: Introduction

• Cloud spending decisions
• AWS pricing
• Cost drivers
• AWS Well-Architected Framework
• AWS Cloud Value Framework
• Activity 1.1: Cloud value metrics
• Cloud Financial Management
• Activity 1.2: Cloud Financial Management outcomes

Module 2: Planning and Forecasting

• Estimate cloud workload costs
• Activity 2.1: Build and refine a cost estimate
• Budget and forecast cloud costs
• Improve cloud financial predictability

Module 3: Measurement and Accountability

• KPIs and unit metrics
• Cost visibility and monitoring
• Demonstration 3.1: Tools for cost visibility, tools for cost monitoring
• Cost allocation and accountability
• Cost allocation building blocks

Day 2

Module 4: Cost Optimization

• Usage optimizations
• Commitment-based purchase options
• Activity 4.1: Cost optimization

Module 5: Cloud Financial Operations

• Organizational change for CFM
• Organization models for CFM
• Activity 5.1: Organizational models
• Establish a cost-aware organizational culture
• Governance, control, and agility
• AWS governance and control building blocks
• Automated-based governance using AWS services

Module 6: Financial Transformation and Innovation

• Keys to financial innovation
• Financial transformation
• Activity 6.1: Solutions for financial innovation

Module 7: Resources and Next Steps

• Module resources
• Next steps