CloudHealth has announced a significant expansion of its AWS Savings Plan capabilities with the general release of several new tools that help drive better business outcomes through the entire lifecycle of Savings Plans management.

AWS launched Savings Plans in late 2019 to give businesses an alternative to Reserved Instances to save money on their AWS spending. CloudHealth incorporated Savings Plans into its cloud cost optimization and governance platform, initially providing customers with Cost History Reports to provide information on costs as they are incurred or over the life of the Savings Plan. Usage Reports gave customers insights into where Savings Plans had been applied to show how much compute usage was covered by the Savings Plan discounts.

Convertible Reservation Exchanger was introduced to allow businesses to get the most out of their existing Reserved Instances before taking advantage of Savings Plans, and the company established a Strategic Savings Desk staffed by AWS experts to help customers with Savings Plans and discount management.

Now new tools have been released to help companies determine which of the six Compute Savings Plan purchase options is best option for their business, along with the different trade offs with each of the 6 options. Those trade-offs can be quickly and easily compared on a single screen.

It is now possible to set specific KPIs for savings, spend, or coverage, and view which of the recommendations best meets those requirements, and analyses can be exported into a CSV output for further evaluation.

After comparing the various options, Savings Plans can now be purchased directly through the CloudHealth platform, without having to go to AWS.

Cost, usage and performance data can be presented in various groupings to show the units, teams, and projects that have received the benefit of the Savings Plan and the impact of Savings Plan discounts on KPIs can be easily evaluated. The new tools make it much easier to plan and forecast future purchases of Savings Plans.

Data can also be easily shared with relevant stakeholders, with customizable reports generated for each individual stakeholder showing the data they need. The reports show how Savings Plans have impacted business goals, custom dashboards can be easily built, and it is possible to subscribe to regular updates and receive new reports via email.

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Many organizations find it difficult to keep their cloud environments secure and compliant with data protection standards as cloud usage grows. While they had effective security processes for their on-premises infrastructure, they do not always translate to the cloud and fail to mitigate risks associated with decentralized cloud usage.

Ensuring security processes are in place that are effective at identifying cloud misconfigurations that could be exploited by threat actors to gain access to cloud data is essential, but if those processes are not implemented, security becomes an impossible task.

One of the problems is that while standalone configurations may be correct, they can combine with other configurations which can potentially allow unauthorized access to sensitive data. These complex violation chains can be difficult to identify and are a common cause of cloud security breaches. Creating security policies to address risks can cause problems, as security policies can easily have an impact on productivity.

The creation of effective security policies that do not negatively affect the organization is a challenge, but one that can be easily overcome by adopting the right strategies.

The Cloud Security Alliance is running a webinar on Tuesday July 7, 2020 to help organizations scale their cloud usage while also improving their security posture. The CSA will be highlighting proven strategies that also empower teams to take full advantage of the agility benefits of the cloud.

The webinar will cover some of the most common security vulnerabilities and threats that increase security and compliance risks, how it is possible to ensure governance while maintaining the flexibility required for developer productivity, explain key steps that can be taken to improve your security posture, and cover lessons that have been learned from scaling these processes to support a growing cloud environment

The Cloud Security Alliance will be joined by Kolby Allen, Senior Architect at Zipwhip, and Jason Needham, Senior Director of Cloud Security at VMware.

Webinar Details

A Practitioner’s Guide to Cloud Security and Compliance Processes

Tuesday July 7, 2020

10 am PT / 1 pm ET

Click here to register for the webinar

The post Webinar Today: A Practitioner’s Guide to Cloud Security and Compliance Processes appeared first on HIPAA Journal.

VMware has announced it has deepened its collaboration with Microsoft and has now added the CloudHealth multi-cloud management platform to the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

The CloudHealth platform helps organizations quantify, understand, optimize and automate cloud infrastructure and provides full visibility into an organization’s entire multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environment. The platform unites discreet data from essential cloud tools and services to give a holistic perspective of the cloud ecosystem. The increased visibility helps with organizational governance, shows cloud usage, provides recommendations for optimization to improve resource utilization and greatly reduce wastage, resulting in significant cost savings.

“Having CloudHealth on the Azure Marketplace both strengthens and deepens our collaboration with Microsoft,” said Tom Axbey, GM, Cloud Management at VMware. “Moreover, it enables us to deliver on the promise of helping customers innovate at cloud speed, which has always been core to our DNA and serves as the foundation for all new CloudHealth features and enhancements.”

The CloudHealth platform can be used by enterprises to improve governance and control of their cloud resources, regardless of their progress on their cloud journey. Whether organizations are just developing a cloud strategy or have an advanced Cloud Center of Excellence, the CloudHealth platform will help drive accountability, improve cross-organizational collaboration, and help reduce cloud bills.

The Azure Marketplace includes a range of software solutions that have been optimized and certified for use on Microsoft Azure and makes those solutions more accessible to cloud users. Azure customers will now have easy access to the CloudHealth platform and can use it to optimize their cloud resources and enable secure and efficient cloud operations across their multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

“Microsoft Azure Marketplace lets customers worldwide discover, try, and deploy software solutions that are certified and optimized to run on Azure. Azure Marketplace helps solutions like CloudHealth by VMware reach more customers and markets,” said Sajan Parihar, Senior Director, Microsoft Azure Platform at Microsoft Corp.

The post CloudHealth by VMware Platform Added to Microsoft Azure Marketplace appeared first on HIPAA Journal.

VMware has announced it has deepened its collaboration with Microsoft and has now added the CloudHealth multi-cloud management platform to the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

The CloudHealth platform helps organizations quantify, understand, optimize and automate cloud infrastructure and provides full visibility into an organization’s entire multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environment. The platform unites discreet data from essential cloud tools and services to give a holistic perspective of the cloud ecosystem. The increased visibility helps with organizational governance, shows cloud usage, provides recommendations for optimization to improve resource utilization and greatly reduce wastage, resulting in significant cost savings.

“Having CloudHealth on the Azure Marketplace both strengthens and deepens our collaboration with Microsoft,” said Tom Axbey, GM, Cloud Management at VMware. “Moreover, it enables us to deliver on the promise of helping customers innovate at cloud speed, which has always been core to our DNA and serves as the foundation for all new CloudHealth features and enhancements.”

The CloudHealth platform can be used by enterprises to improve governance and control of their cloud resources, regardless of their progress on their cloud journey. Whether organizations are just developing a cloud strategy or have an advanced Cloud Center of Excellence, the CloudHealth platform will help drive accountability, improve cross-organizational collaboration, and help reduce cloud bills.

The Azure Marketplace includes a range of software solutions that have been optimized and certified for use on Microsoft Azure and makes those solutions more accessible to cloud users. Azure customers will now have easy access to the CloudHealth platform and can use it to optimize their cloud resources and enable secure and efficient cloud operations across their multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

“Microsoft Azure Marketplace lets customers worldwide discover, try, and deploy software solutions that are certified and optimized to run on Azure. Azure Marketplace helps solutions like CloudHealth by VMware reach more customers and markets,” said Sajan Parihar, Senior Director, Microsoft Azure Platform at Microsoft Corp.

The post CloudHealth by VMware Platform Added to Microsoft Azure Marketplace appeared first on HIPAA Journal.