Today, Vantage is announcing support for AWS Blended Commitment Discounts, providing customers with a way to evenly spread commitment-based discounts to all of their eligible usage. Vantage will calculate the effective savings rate by service, creating an easy out-of-the-box way to share discounts evenly across an organization.

Many customers looking to maximize savings from AWS Commitment models such as Reserved Instances and Savings Plans take advantage of discount sharing in order to ensure that any eligible usage can be covered. This leads to unpredictability of where discounts will be applied, especially for Savings Plans, which have a different savings discount for each usage type, and apply from highest discount usage to lowest until the committed amount is consumed. Customers who have usage types that are on the lowest end of the Savings Plans discount, such as Windows usage or workloads outside of US regions, will rarely see discounts make it to this usage without purchasing dedicated Savings Plans in the accounts that consume them. This leads to much more planning that has to be done in order to ensure internal teams are getting the benefits of these commitment-based discounts.

Now, with AWS Blended Commitment Discounts, customers can opt in to have their effective savings rate from commitment-based discounts applied to all eligible usage, creating even savings across all of their teams and workloads. Once enabled, Vantage will calculate the total savings based on an effective savings rate per service, and apply it proportionally to all eligible costs. When viewing a Vantage Cost Report with amortization and discounts enabled, all usage will be evenly discounted from its gross cost. This allows teams to see accurate spend figures for their applications, with even discounts already applied.

Blended Commitment Discounts is available for Vantage customers with an AWS integration by contacting support@vantage.sh. For more information, see the Blended Commitment Discounts documentation.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is being launched?

Vantage is launching Blended Commitment Discounts for AWS. This allows customers to evenly spread their commitment-based discounts to all eligible usage, regardless of where they were applied by AWS, in order to ensure fair chargeback among internal teams.

2. Who is the customer?

Any Vantage customer with an AWS integration, especially those with a complex mix of Savings Plans and Reserved Instances who want a simpler, more consistent representation of commitment discounts in reporting.

3. How much does this cost?

There is no additional cost to enable blended commitment discounts.

4. How do I enable blended commitment discounts?

Contact support@vantage.sh, and ask to enable blended commitment discounts for your AWS integration.

5. What changes will I see in my AWS data?

For eligible usage that is covered by commitments:

• Usage is represented as AmortizedUsage at gross cost.
• A separate AllocatedAmortizedDiscount row is emitted to represent the blended savings amount.

For eligible categories, separate discount line items (e.g., EDP / Private Rate Card) are not emitted, since the blended discount is derived from net effective cost fields.

6. Which charges are NOT affected?

• Commitment fees (RI fees and Savings Plan recurring fees) pass through as unamortized fees (with any associated discounts as unamortized discounts).
• Non-commitment fees that span multiple days (e.g., Enterprise Support, Marketplace) continue to be amortized across the billing period as they are today.

7. How is the blended discount amount calculated?

For eligible usage, Vantage computes an effective savings rate per AWS service and applies it to the gross usage cost. The blended discount amount is the gross cost multiplied by that service's effective savings rate.

8. How do totals reconcile?

For eligible usage, the combination of:

• AmortizedUsage (gross cost)
• AllocatedAmortizedDiscount (negative savings amount)

These amounts should reconcile to the intended net effective cost representation used by the blended rate.

9. Does this impact any usage that is not eligible for commitment-based discounts?

For usage that is not eligible for blended commitment discounts, discount rows are still emitted as they are today.

10. Are unamortized costs affected?

No, unamortized costs, such as upfront fees or monthly fees of commitments, will remain the same.

11. How does this affect Kubernetes efficiency reporting?

For Kubernetes-related services, when a rate is present and the charge is eligible, Vantage also computes and attaches a discounted rate based on the blended savings rate, so Kubernetes discounted-rate calculations remain consistent.

12. Can I apply this to only specific Cost Reports or Workspaces?

This feature applies to all Cost Reports and Workspaces for the enabled AWS integration. It cannot be selectively applied to specific reports.