2nd Watch Delivers New Cloud Spend Tracking and Management Application

SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - Jul 10, 2014) - 2nd Watch, a provider of cloud deployment, management and monitoring services, announces a major upgrade to 2W INSIGHT, its cost and usage management software for Amazon Web Services (AWS). The latest version of INSIGHT gives companies a business-friendly way to monitor and allocate AWS spending.

The process to track and assign AWS spending by business unit, department and/or project can be a complicated process. Companies must either create separate AWS accounts for each cost center or go through the manual process of tagging individual cloud resources such as server, load balancer or database. Since a single deployment can have dozens or even hundreds of resources, tagging can be a difficult process and will require the development and careful implementation of an enterprise-wide tag naming convention. If a typo is made in a tag, that resource will not roll up to the associated department or cost center. In addition, each time a user adds an AWS resource, he must manually apply the precise tag, otherwise the spending won't be tracked accurately.

2W INSIGHT 6.0 was designed with enterprises in mind. The software allows IT departments to easily track and allocate cloud expenses based on their company's organizational structure. Managers enter the cost center tracking scheme once and assign AWS accounts as needed. Once set up, all cloud resources are tracked and allocated across the business. IT can make modifications to the scheme using a simple drag and drop tool. This reduces errors, complexity and time associated with AWS tagging and delivers a consolidated view of AWS spending across functional cost centers such as Marketing, Sales and Finance and geographical units such as North America. Further, with built-in "Showback" reports, the reporting process is much simpler. 2W INSIGHT automatically applies AWS tier discounts and Reserved Instances (RI) across cost centers, ensuring costs are accurate and that companies can take full advantage of RI purchases.

"With INSIGHT 6.0, businesses now have a tool that maps usage to their specific enterprise structure," says Joel Rosenberger EVP of Software, Cloud Computing, with 2nd Watch. "Business owners can now understand the true cost of IT services and CIOs can allocate costs and cloud usage to projects and departments. INSIGHT helps companies accurately plan for future cloud spending and forecast ROI."

A CIO, for instance, can view cloud spending across the business -- and drill down by department, project, region and/or AWS resource. Conversely, a business unit manager can see their departmental cloud spending down to the specific project or team level. INSIGHT also helps a company understand trends around daily and monthly usage across AWS resource, such as database, compute, storage and application services.

"INSIGHT gives us a far easier way to track and understand our AWS usage and cost, and that's critical to getting budget approvals and buy-in from senior management for our cloud initiatives," says Jordan Kintzle, Director of IT and Support, Cyber-Anatomy.

About 2nd Watch

2nd Watch is a global leader in building, deploying and managing Amazon Web Services (AWS) based IT operations for enterprise customers. 2nd Watch assists customers in evaluating the economics of moving IT operations into AWS, designs and builds highly reliable and scalable AWS based enterprise IT platforms, and provides software tools and management services that enable enterprises to deploy, manage and optimize cloud based IT operations infrastructure. 2nd Watch has effectively moved over 2MW of enterprise data center capacity into the AWS cloud as part of 300+ platform and data center migrations. 2nd Watch is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner and is headquartered in Liberty Lake, WA with offices in Seattle, San Francisco, and New York. For more information, try the TCO Calculator at tco.2ndwatch.com, email info@2ndwatch.com, visit www.2ndwatch.com or call 1-888-317-7920.