New Feature: Custom Data API

New feature alert! Cloudthread is launching a Custom Data API! This is one of the most requested features by our users, as it significantly widens the scope of cloud cost analytics the product provides. It allows setting up a custom time series data stream into the Cloudthread platform, so that more impactful unit metrics and cost views can be created and more stakeholders can be served with cloud cost savings insights.

In the initial release, the feature allows streaming any time series metrics data with up to 10 dimensions into the platform, and using this data as custom unit metrics denominator.

Before we introduced the Custom Data API feature, our users were able to create Cost Views and Unit Metrics based on natively integrated AWS billing, CloudWatch and Kubernetes data sources. This allowed for AWS cloud cost root cause analysis, anomaly detection and engineering KPI tracking based on technical unit metrics (e.g. $ / ELB request, $ / Lambda Invocation, $ / Container).

However, certain important use cases dependent on non-AWS/k8s data sources were not served. One such instance that was frequently requested by our users is tracking business unit metrics, e.g. $ / customer, $ / order, $ / ride (Lyft use case), $ / game (Wildlife use case), etc. Having these metrics available in Unit Metrics Library was essential for internal benchmarking, business KPI tracking, ROI calculations, forecasting and other use cases connected to cloud cost efficiency on the business side and experienced by Product Managers, FP&A Analysts, CFOs, etc. Custom Data API made it all possible.

In the initial release, the feature allows streaming any time series metrics data with up to 10 dimensions into the platform, and using this data as custom unit metrics denominator. This means that with some data cleaning and setup, Cloudthread platform can serve any type of AWS unit metric – both of engineering and business type (you can learn more about various kinds of unit metrics and their use cases here). Apart from the business use cases described in the previous paragraph, Custom Data API unlocks a wide range of engineering use cases that require data outside of CloudWatch and k8s. For example, getting cost per Redshift query (granularity not natively supported by AWS billing) to understand efficiency of analytics stack and set it as a KPI for Data Engineering team now becomes possible.

In the next iteration, the API will be extended to serve general Cost Transparency insights, and will unlock fully customizable data integration options not limited to AWS billing. It will become possible to bring custom cost data from other sources (such as Snowflake or ClickHouse) and create Cost Views and Unit Metrics for literally anything related to your cloud spend.

More details on the feature and the setup process can be found in our documentation. Please contact us to share your feedback or start using the Custom Data API as well as other cloud cost management capabilities Cloudthread platform provides.