Introduction

July 2025 has been a milestone month for Octo, marking significant strides in stabilizing and refining our core features to deliver a more intuitive and powerful cloud cost management experience. This month's updates focus on two critical areas that our users have been requesting: smoother AWS onboarding and more comprehensive unit cost insights. These improvements represent our commitment to making cloud cost optimization not just more accessible, but genuinely actionable for your team.

Let’s dive into these new enhancements and explore what Octo has rolled out for July.

AWS Registration - UI Improvements

One of the most significant pain points we’ve addressed this July is the AWS registrations process. We understand that getting started with cloud cost management shouldn’t feel like navigating a maze, which is why we’ve reimagined the onboarding experience to be more flexible, intuitive, and user-friendly.

Here’s what new:

• Support for Existing CUR Setup: With this new flow, you can now choose to either create a New CUR Setup or use an Existing Cost and Usage Report (CUR) already configured in your AWS account.

• Improved Region Selection for S3 Bucket Configuration: Region selection is now handled through a dropdown menu, improving consistency and providing a cleaner, giving you a more focused layout within the overall registration flow.

• Enhanced Instructions and Overall Flow: Updated setup instructions and a cleaner layout now guide users more smoothly through the registration process.

These changes work together to create a guided experience that reduces the cognitive load on users, allowing them to focus on their cost management objectives rather than wrestling with complex configuration requirements.

Unit Metrics

Display number of units per day alongside  unit cost

While a faster onboarding process gets users into Octo quickly, our Unit Metrics enhancement delivers a deeper, more meaningful improvement—transforming the way you understand and act on your cloud cost data. This update tackles a critical shortcoming in traditional cost analysis: the missing link between cost efficiency and scale.

We’re enhancing the Cost Group feature to provide richer, more contextual insights for unit cost analysis. The chart tooltip has been upgraded to show not only the Cost per unit but also the total number of units contributing to your cloud costs. This means you can instantly see both the efficiency and the scale of your operations in a single view.

Here’s what’s new in the updated tooltip:

• New "Unit Metrics" Section – All unit-cost-related data is now grouped under a dedicated header for clarity and easy scanning.

• "No. of Units" Display – View the total units for the selected time period, revealing the key volume drivers behind your costs—whether that’s daily active users, API calls, transactions, or other custom-defined units.

With these improvements, you gain a complete picture at a glance. For any given data point, you can now correlate:

• No. of units – The volume of activity driving costs
• Cost per unit – The efficiency or rate of that activity

For example, when you hover over a cost chart within a cost group, you’ll immediately see both how much you spend and what level of activity caused it—empowering faster, data-driven decisions without needing to dig through multiple reports.

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In the previous version, showing only the Cost per Unit gave a useful measure of cost-efficiency, but it lacked important context about the overall scale of usage. Without knowing the Number of Units, it was harder to fully understand what was driving cost changes or how usage trends were impacting spend.

By adding the Number of Units alongside the Cost per Unit, you can now:

• Improve Cost Analysis – Identify the true causes of cost fluctuations by seeing whether changes come from higher usage, higher unit cost, or both. This enables more precise and data-driven optimization decisions.

• Enhance Reporting – Clearly demonstrate to stakeholders how key business metrics (such as transactions, workloads, or resource usage) directly relate to cloud spend, making reports more transparent and meaningful.

This small but impactful enhancement brings valuable context to your cost data, giving you greater insight, stronger communication tools, and better control over managing and optimizing your cloud costs.

Looking Ahead: Transform Your Cloud Cost Management Today

Experience the full potential of Octo’s enhanced AWS integration and expanded unit cost insights, designed to give you deeper visibility and greater control over your cloud spending. 

These July updates empower teams to not only streamline existing cost management workflows but also to implement cloud cost optimization practices with confidence—whether you’re refining a mature FinOps process or starting your optimization journey for the first time. 

With smoother AWS onboarding and richer, more actionable unit cost data, Octo makes it easier to identify cost drivers, allocate expenses accurately, and uncover opportunities for savings without sacrificing performance.

Begin your Octo journey today and see how our latest improvements can equip your team to make smarter, data-driven decisions about cloud infrastructure. Book a demo to learn how Octo can help you optimize spending, maximize efficiency, and drive stronger business outcomes through more informed cost management.