Post-migration cost analysis and optimisation that prevents the AWS bill from exceeding what you spent on-prem. CloudWatch metrics analysis to identify right-sizing opportunities -- instances running at 15% CPU average over 30 days are candidates for downsizing. AWS Compute Optimizer recommendations reviewed and applied for EC2, RDS, Lambda, and ECS Fargate task sizing. Reserved instance and Savings Plan purchasing for stable workloads where a 1- or 3-year commitment delivers 30-60% savings over on-demand pricing -- compute savings plans are applied automatically to the highest on-demand spend regardless of instance family, giving more flexibility than instance-specific reserved instances.
S3 storage class lifecycle policies move objects to S3 Standard-IA at 30 days, S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval at 90 days, and S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval at 180 days -- automatically reducing storage cost for data that is rarely accessed without any application change. Idle resource identification: unused Elastic IPs ($3.60/month each), unattached EBS volumes (charged even when not attached), snapshots older than the retention policy, and stopped EC2 instances still incurring EBS and Elastic IP charges. AWS Cost Anomaly Detection alerts configured per service and per tag so a misconfigured Lambda function that runs in a loop at 1,000x normal invocations triggers an alert within 2 hours, not at month-end when the bill arrives. Cloud cost typically lands 20-40% below equivalent on-prem spend within 12 months of optimisation.