January 2022 Summaries

Vantage has announced early access support for Google Cloud, allowing users to view Google Cloud costs within the Vantage console. This update caters to users who exclusively use Google Cloud as well as those who operate across both Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services, enabling them to manage and view costs from both providers in a single interface. To gain early access, users need to create a Vantage account and contact support to request it. This effort is part of Vantage's broader initiative to help users track and optimize their cloud spending efficiently.

Vantage has partnered with Quolum to offer a comprehensive solution for managing SaaS and cloud infrastructure costs, providing Quolum customers access to Vantage’s Pro or Business tier plans without additional charges. This collaboration allows companies to gain a holistic view of their IT expenses through a single subscription, eliminating the need for separate services to manage SaaS subscriptions and cloud infrastructure billing. This partnership is part of Vantage's broader strategy to assist organizations in optimizing cloud costs, and they invite interested parties to explore partnership opportunities. Vantage's recent milestones include becoming listed in the Databricks MCP Catalog and Marketplace, launching remote instances MCP Server, achieving FinOps Certified Platform status, and attaining SOC 1 Type 2 compliance.

The blog post provides an independent pricing evaluation between Amazon RDS and PlanetScale, focusing on when it might be financially advantageous to switch to PlanetScale based on database usage patterns. PlanetScale, a newer entrant in the Database-as-a-Service market, offers a serverless database service powered by Vitess and charges based on rows read, written, and storage used, while Amazon RDS charges using a traditional AWS a-la-carte pricing model. Although both services offer free tiers, PlanetScale's performance is noted to potentially exceed Amazon’s db.t2.micro instance, and its free tier is perpetual compared to Amazon's 12-month cap. The analysis reveals that PlanetScale could be more cost-effective if the number of rows read and written is significantly below its allocation. However, the decision depends on specific database usage patterns, and other factors such as the potential benefits of RDS reserved instances, usage predictability, and feature sets should also be considered.

Vantage has introduced the Savings Planner, a new feature within its console designed to help users maximize cost savings on AWS compute expenses by offering advanced planning and forecasting dashboards. This tool allows customers to model AWS Savings Plans, providing personalized forecasting and what-if scenario analysis to potentially achieve up to 72% savings on AWS compute costs. Prior to this, Vantage provided analytics for organizing and reporting accrued costs, but lacked detailed breakdowns and forecasting capabilities for Savings Plan utilization. With Savings Planner, customers can input various scenarios, perform what-if analyses, and share financial reports, streamlining a process that previously required extensive manual effort. Available to Business and Enterprise tier users, the tool integrates with AWS accounts to pre-fill data for planning purposes, and soon, Vantage plans to offer a managed service to optimize and purchase Savings Plans on behalf of customers. The service is contingent on enabling specific permissions and is not available to those on Vantage's free or Pro tiers.