December 2022 Summaries

Infracost has introduced several new features aimed at enhancing cost management and optimization for cloud infrastructure. Users can now implement Guardrails to monitor pull requests and trigger actions if cost thresholds are exceeded, and utilize cost policies to identify potential savings by scanning code repositories. The integration with Jira allows for seamless tracking of cost estimates in Jira issues, enhancing workflow efficiency for engineering managers. Additionally, a new README badge feature provides quick cost estimates from repository files, and the capacity to override cloud regions enables more accurate cost forecasting. The update includes support for additional cloud resources and regions, as well as improvements such as faster Terragrunt evaluations and enhanced GitHub App integration for better context on pull requests. Infracost has also reduced the price of its Cloud service as a gesture of appreciation to its open-source community, with this offer available until the end of December 2022.

In 2012, a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator was developed to help companies estimate cloud infrastructure costs by scraping pricing data from AWS, Azure, and GCP, as APIs weren't available then. With cloud pricing complexity increasing and nearly 4 million prices now available via Cloud Pricing API, traditional calculators and Excel spreadsheets have become inadequate for accurate cost estimation. The goal is to eliminate these outdated tools by creating a new product that excels in speed and accuracy, integrating cost estimation directly into the development process. This improved solution includes a VS Code extension that provides real-time cost estimates as engineers type their infrastructure code, promising more precise financial forecasting without slowing down development. Additionally, team collaboration is enhanced through Infracost CI/CD, which automates cost estimates within pull requests, and future plans aim to build an end-to-end automated workflow from project management tools like Jira to cost estimation.