In this seventeen-course curriculum, you learn about cloud business value and how to build a business case for a workload migration. You also discover Cloud Financial Management (CFM) best practices, including how to measure, optimize, and plan cloud usage, and how finance teams can innovate with Amazon Web Services (AWS). You learn how to report, monitor, and allocate your cloud costs. You gain technical and pricing-model based cost optimization strategies, find out how to forecast cloud costs, and learn about organizational and governance-based best practices that help drive cost-efficient usage of AWS. You also discover ways to innovate within your finance organization by understanding various solutions available to your firm.
- Curriculum level: Fundamental
- Duration: 17 hours
Activities
This curriculum includes presentations and assessments.
Curriculum objectives
In this curriculum, you will learn to:
- Explain the four value areas where you can realize benefits when using AWS.
- Assemble a business case that includes quantifying business value.
- Quantify migration costs and discover AWS programs available to reduce migration costs.
- Use AWS tools to report, monitor, allocate, optimize, and plan your AWS spend.
- Use technical optimizations and commitment-based purchase options to reduce and avoid AWS costs.
- Estimate costs associated with current and future cloud workloads.
- Build a CFM practice, and implement financial governance and controls.
- Drive finance organization innovation with AWS and AWS Partner solutions.
Intended audience
This curriculum is intended for:
- Chief financial officers
- Chief accounting officers
- Financial controllers
- Financial planning and analysis managers
- Procurement managers
- Financial analysts
- Accounts payable
- CFM/FinOps leaders
- Cloud infrastructure engineers
- Cloud application engineers
- Anyone curious about cloud business value and CFM
We recommend that attendees of this curriculum have taken:
AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials
AWS Cloud Essentials for Business Leaders
Role Based Recommendations
Although we recommend taking all of the courses in this curriculum, this table maps individual courses to specific finance team personas. Please review to see what the recommended courses are for your specific finance role, as you plan your learning journey for the AWS Cloud for Finance Professionals curriculum.
Your Role
Chief Financial Officer
Financial Controller
Chief Accounting Officer
Financial Planning & Analysis
Procurement
Financial Analyst
Accounts Payable
Cloud Financial Management Leader
Recommended Courses
AWS Cloud for Finance Professionals: Overview
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Introduction: Cloud Computing on AWS
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Introduction: Cloud Business Value
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Introduction: Evaluating a Cloud Migration Decision
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Introduction: Understanding AWS Cloud Financial Management
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Measurement & Accountability: Cost Reporting and Monitoring
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Measurement & Accountability: Cost Allocation Building Blocks
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Measurement & Accountability: Cost Allocation Models
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Measurement & Accountability: Cloud Performance Indicators
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Cost Optimization: Cost-aware Cloud Consumption
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Cost Optimization: Optimize Cloud Usage
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Cost Optimization: Commitment-based Purchase Options
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Planning & Forecasting: Estimating Cloud Costs
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Planning & Forecasting: Cloud Budgeting and Forecasting
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Cloud Financial Operations: Organizational Change for AWS Cloud Financial Management
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Cloud Financial Operations: Cloud Financial Governance and Controls
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Innovation: Finance Innovation with AWS
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Curriculum Outline
Course 1: Curriculum Overview
- Suggested prerequisites
- Curriculum objectives
- Curriculum introduction
Course 2: Introduction: Cloud Computing and AWS
- The importance of cloud computing and AWS
- AWS and key AWS services
- How security works on AWS
- How other customers have succeeded with AWS
Course 3: Introduction: Cloud Business Value
- Cloud business value
- The AWS Cloud Value Framework
- The AWS Cloud Value benchmarking study
Course 4: Introduction: Evaluating a Cloud Migration Decision
- The AWS business case methodology
- Discovering and mapping current IT estate to AWS resources
- Calculating total cost of ownership
- Quantifying business value
- Estimating and reducing migration costs
Course 5: Introduction: Understanding AWS Cloud Financial Management
- How technology consumption changes with AWS Cloud
- Why AWS CFM is important
- What AWS CFM is all about
Course 6: Measurement and Accountability: Cost Reporting and Monitoring
- The importance of cost visibility
- Tools that provide cost visibility
- Tools for cost monitoring
- Establishing organizational cost visibility
Course 7: Measurement and Accountability: Cost Allocation Building Blocks
- The importance of cost allocation
- Cost allocation building blocks
- Account and tagging strategies
Course 8: Measurement and Accountability: Cost Allocation Models
- The importance of cost allocation
- Cost allocation models
- Allocating AWS costs
- Establishing cost accountability
Course 9: Measurement and Accountability: Cloud Performance Indicators
- The importance of key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Measuring efficiency in a cloud environment
- Measuring efficient KPIs through an AWS customer example
Course 10: Cost Optimization: Cost-Aware Cloud Consumption
- The importance of cost awareness when you build in the AWS Cloud
- What it means to be Well-Architected
- AWS pricing models
- Cost awareness for builders
Course 11: Cost Optimization: Optimize Cloud Usage
- Usage-based technical cost optimization
- Technical cost optimizations
Course 12: Cost Optimization: Commitment-Based Purchase Options
- The importance of commitment-based purchase options
- Savings Plans and Reserved Instances
- Amazon CloudFront savings bundles
- A commitment-based purchase option process
Course 13: Planning and Forecasting: Estimating cloud costs
- The importance of estimating cloud costs
- How to estimate cloud workload costs
- A prescriptive cloud cost estimation process
- Estimating costs associated with large cloud migrations
Course 14: Planning and Forecasting: Cloud Budgeting and Forecasting
- The importance of cloud budgeting and forecasting
- Methodologies for cloud spend forecasting
- Improving cloud spend predictability
- Establishing a cloud budgeting and forecasting process
Course 15: Cloud Financial Operations: Organizational Change for AWS Cloud Financial Management
- The importance of organizational change for AWS CFM
- New cloud-related responsibilities as a finance professional
- Different organizational models for CFM
- Establishing a cost-aware organizational culture
Course 16: Cloud Financial Operations: Cloud Financial Governance and Controls
- The importance of cloud financial governance and controls
- Business process-based governance
- Automation-based governance using AWS
Course 17: Innovation: Finance Innovation with AWS
- Principles of finance transformation
- Key finance innovation activities
- Finance innovation solutions and use cases
- Next steps to identify innovation opportunities for your finance organization
