A Canadian digital-risk-protection cyber-security ISV
AWS-validated reference — full details available to AWS Partner Validation or on request. (Customer name held on file with VeUP.)
VeUP delivered the customer, a Canadian digital-risk-protection ISV, a production Amazon QuickSight single-pane FinOps dashboard over the AWS Cost & Usage Report (S3 + Glue + Athena) — exposing resource-level Lambda/RDS/intra-region cost beyond Cost Explorer, replacing spreadsheets.
The challenge
the customer, a cost-conscious, R&D-heavy cyber-security ISV scaling its platform, needed resource-level cost and operational visibility beyond what AWS Cost Explorer surfaces — Lambda, Amazon RDS, and intra-region cost broken out — plus billing alerts, commitment guidance under workload variability, and an AWS Marketplace listing to reach enterprise co-sell, without standing up a BI team.
The solution
A managed-FinOps engagement whose reporting core is an Amazon QuickSight single-pane dashboard that ingests the AWS Cost & Usage Report through an S3 data lake cataloged by AWS Glue and queried by Amazon Athena — giving developers resource-level cost visibility (Lambda, Amazon RDS, intra-region) with parameters/controls and row-level security. Layered with AWS Budgets / billing alerts, Reserved-Instance automation guidance (Archera) for a variable workload, AWS IAM Identity Center and AWS KMS, plus a delivered Well-Architected Review and an AWS Marketplace product listing + bundle for enterprise co-sell.
Production outcomes
| KPI | Result |
|---|---|
| Production outcomes | A production Amazon QuickSight cost-and-observability dashboard runs for the customer developers, establishing resource-level cost visibility (Lambda/RDS/intra-region) beyond Cost Explorer and replacing manual, spreadsheet-driven cost review; billing alerts and RI-automation guidance in place; a Well-Architected Review delivered; and an AWS Marketplace listing + bundle live for enterprise co-sell (Marketplace Bundle PS $10,000 Closed-Won; Resell $63,588). |
| Engagement window | 2023-05-31 (Resell Customer Live); Marketplace bundle 2024-08-26; WAR 2024-09-23 → 2024-10-31 (Marketplace listing live); ongoing |
| Cost / TCO posture | The QuickSight-over-CUR surface is itself the FinOps mechanism: resource-level cost attribution (Lambda/RDS/intra-region) plus billing alerts and RI-automation guidance (Archera) for a variable workload. Realized savings are customer-tenant figures held in the customer AWS account. |
| Lessons & continuation | QuickSight-over-CUR (S3 + Glue + Athena) gives a small, cost-conscious ISV resource-level cost visibility that Cost Explorer can't, and a developer-facing single pane drives FinOps adoption better than spreadsheets; pairing the build with a Marketplace listing opens enterprise co-sell. |
Architecture
A Well-Architected-annotated view of the previous state and the production Amazon QuickSight FinOps architecture, mapped to the six AWS Well-Architected pillars.
Amazon QuickSight · AWS Cost & Usage Report · Amazon Athena · AWS Glue · Amazon S3 · AWS Budgets · AWS IAM Identity Center · AWS KMS