Icon source: AWS
AWS Organizations
Cloud Provider: AWS
What is AWS Organizations
AWS Organizations is a cloud service from Amazon Web Services that allows you to centrally manage and govern your environment as you scale your AWS resources across multiple accounts.
AWS Organizations is a robust service designed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help streamline the management and governance of multiple AWS accounts. With the adoption of cloud computing on a rise, organizations often find themselves handling an increasing number of AWS accounts. This surge can lead to complexity in billing, security, and compliance management. AWS Organizations addresses these challenges by offering a unified way to manage multiple accounts centrally.
At the core of AWS Organizations is the concept of a master account and member accounts. The master account serves as the central control point, allowing administrators to create new accounts and invite existing accounts to join their organization. This hierarchical model enables the efficient distribution of shared resources, central policy management, and consolidated billing, thus simplifying the task of managing numerous accounts.
One of the key features of AWS Organizations is Service Control Policies (SCPs). SCPs are akin to permissions that allow administrators to define and enforce policies across the entire organization or specific accounts within the organization. This level of control is instrumental in ensuring compliance with internal policies and external regulations. For instance, an SCP can restrict certain AWS services from being used, thus ensuring all members of the organization adhere to established IT governance standards.
Another significant benefit of AWS Organizations is the ability to streamline billing. By aggregating the billing of all member accounts, AWS Organizations enables the master account to benefit from consolidated billing. This not only reduces the administrative burden of managing multiple bills but also allows organizations to leverage volume discounts, as the combined usage across all accounts can qualify for tiered pricing discounts on many AWS services.
AWS Organizations also supports automated account creation and management, which is a boon for large enterprises that need to provision and manage many AWS accounts efficiently. Through APIs, it integrates with other AWS services and third-party applications, allowing for the automation of account setup, resource deployment, and policy application.
The service enhances security and compliance by offering fine-grained control over AWS resources. The ability to apply policies at the organization, organizational unit (OU), or account level provides a flexible framework for enforcing security standards and compliance requirements. This is particularly valuable for organizations operating in regulated industries or those that need to adhere to strict internal security policies.
In summary, AWS Organizations is an essential service for any organization looking to manage multiple AWS accounts efficiently. By facilitating centralized management, simplified billing, compliance enforcement, and enhanced security, AWS Organizations equips businesses with the tools they need to effectively govern their AWS environment, turning the complexity of cloud management into a streamlined and controlled process.
Key AWS Organizations Features
AWS Organizations provides centralized management, automated account creation, Service Control Policies for governance, consolidated billing for cost optimization, and customizable IAM roles and policies for enhanced security and compliance.
AWS Organizations allows users to manage and govern their environment as they scale with AWS. By centrally managing policies across multiple AWS accounts, users can streamline operations and simplify compliance requirements.
With AWS Organizations, users can automate the creation and management of new AWS accounts. This feature streamlines the process of expanding AWS resources and ensures new accounts adhere to company policies and security guidelines from the outset.
This feature enables users to apply permission policies across all AWS accounts within the organization. Service Control Policies (SCPs) help ensure that accounts stay within the compliance and governance boundaries set by the organization.
AWS Organizations offers consolidated billing for all accounts within the organization. This simplifies the billing process by aggregating usage across all accounts to a single payer account, potentially leading to lower overall costs.
AWS Organizations allows for the customization of IAM roles and policies at a granular level. This feature grants the flexibility to define precise access controls and permissions tailored to the specific needs of different teams or projects within the organization.
AWS Organizations Use Cases
AWS Organizations enables centralized billing, automated account setup, enhanced security through policy enforcement, and efficient resource and access management across multiple AWS accounts.
AWS Organizations enables companies to consolidate billing across multiple AWS accounts, simplifying the process of tracking and managing cloud spending. Businesses can aggregate their AWS costs and access combined reports, allowing finance teams to easily monitor expenditures and budget more effectively.
Leveraging AWS Organizations allows for the automatic creation and management of AWS accounts according to the established policies and requirements of an enterprise. This streamlines the setup process for new projects or departments, ensuring consistency and compliance with company standards right from the start.
With AWS Organizations, enterprises can apply service control policies (SCPs) across their AWS accounts to enforce compliance and security measures. This helps ensure that all accounts meet the company's security standards, significantly reducing the risk of violations and unauthorized access.
AWS Organizations facilitates the grouping of AWS accounts into organizational units (OUs), enabling simplified management of resources, policies, and permissions. Administrators can apply policies at the OU level, streamline access control, and resource sharing across accounts, enhancing operational efficiency.
AWS Organizations pricing models
AWS Organizations offers a no-cost model for creating and managing an organization, including features like SCPs and consolidated billing, with costs only associated with the AWS resources used.