We are running four AWS environments in parallel: V1 Legacy, V2.0, SP Foundation AWS, and Streaming Teacher AWS. Costs are elevated during transition. This is expected—and temporary. Savings appear when legacy is downsized.
H1 2026 Cost Breakdown
| Line Item | H1 Actual | Annual Budget | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross AWS invoices | $110,856 | — | Includes all AWS Marketplace |
| − Drata (billed via AWS) | −$13,000 | $26,000 | Separate compliance budget |
| Adjusted AWS infrastructure | $97,856 | $137,500 | Core cloud spend |
Drata ($26K/year) has a separate compliance budget. Finance should track gross invoices for completeness, but measure cloud efficiency against the adjusted $97.9K infrastructure figure.
Why Costs Are Higher
Legacy Environments
V1 Legacy, V2.0, Streaming Teacher AWS
SP Foundation AWS
New governed infrastructure, ECS Accelerator
Parallel systems
We can't turn off legacy until Foundation is ready. During migration, we pay for both.
Shared services
Security (Drata), observability (Grafana, CloudWatch), and governance tools serve all environments.
Building for scale
SP Foundation AWS is sized for future growth—capacity we need but aren't fully using yet.
Marketplace timing
Drata ($26K/year, separate budget); Grafana and Blackboard are commitment-based. These create billing peaks.
Migration Plan
V1 Legacy → Maintenance
Maintenance mode only. Retain systems needed for long-term storage and backups.
V2.0 → Minimal Footprint
Downsize to essential services only: QuickSight, Cognito, CodeSites.
Streaming Teacher → Migrate
Move workloads to SP Foundation AWS.
SP Foundation AWS → Primary
New workloads deploy here. Right-size once migration complete.
Savings only count when legacy is reduced. We won't claim savings until workloads are migrated or downsized, and the invoice reduction persists for 2+ billing cycles.
Timeline
Q3 2026: V1 Maintenance
V1 Legacy enters maintenance mode. Storage and backups only.
Q4 2026: V2 Minimal
Streaming Teacher migrated. V2.0 reduced to QuickSight, Cognito, CodeSites.
Q1 2027: Right-Size
SP Foundation AWS optimized to actual load. Savings Plans activated.
Q2 2027: Target Rate
Steady-state $94K annualized. 31.6% reduction achieved.
Committed Target
Revised from 44.8% after separating Drata. This is our committed target, not a range. We report monthly against this number. If migration slips or growth exceeds projections, we flag it early.
How We're Managing Costs
Shared services consolidation
Security, observability, and governance tools now serve all environments from single instances—eliminating duplicate spend.
Savings Plans in progress
Committed to 1-year Savings Plans for ECS and RDS by Q4 2026. Projected 20% discount on compute.
Unused resource cleanup
Monthly audit removing orphaned EBS volumes, unused load balancers, and over-provisioned dev environments.
Utilization monitoring
V3 currently at 35% capacity. Right-sizing triggers when utilization exceeds 60% sustained.
Ownership
Migration
Core Platform Team. Monthly report to Finance by BD5.
Cost Tracking
Core Platform Team. Quarterly review with leadership.
SP Accelerators
The ECS, Grafana, and Terraform modules powering this foundation