Title

AWS re:Invent 2022 - How AWS and Riot Games built a governance reporting engine (GAM203)

Summary

• AWS and Riot Games collaborated to create a governance solution to manage Riot's AWS Cloud spend.
• Riot Games experienced exponential growth, necessitating a more sophisticated approach to cost allocation and reporting.
• The solution involved building a unified dashboard for reporting spend, attributing costs, and integrating security findings.
• The design decisions included the need for real-time data, historical reprocessing, and support for different team perspectives.
• The solution leveraged AWS services like the Cost and Usage Report (CUR), QuickSight, and various data sources for insights.
• The architecture was based on a data lake approach, collecting, enriching, and presenting data in a unified dashboard.
• The dashboards were designed for different user personas, including executives and technical operations teams.
• The solution provided actionable insights for cost savings, right-sizing opportunities, and security enhancements.
• Near real-time alerting was implemented for budget deviations and coverage changes.
• The roadmap includes further enhancements such as actionable items within the dashboard, unit economics visualization, and service health monitoring.

Insights

• Riot Games' growth led to the need for a more granular and real-time governance solution to manage AWS Cloud spend effectively.
• The collaboration between Riot Games and AWS ProServe and Enterprise Support teams was crucial in developing a tailored governance reporting engine.
• The use of AWS services and tools like CUR, QuickSight, Lambda, S3, and Athena was instrumental in building the solution.
• The data lake approach allowed for the integration of various data sources and the ability to reprocess historical data according to current team setups.
• The dashboards provided insights at different levels, from executive overviews to detailed technical operations, with security integrated into the reporting.
• The solution emphasized the importance of aligning cloud governance with organizational structure and business needs.
• The use of intuitive visuals and simple KPIs, such as "green is good, reduce the red," helped users understand and act on the data.
• The ability to alert teams in near real-time about budget and coverage deviations enabled faster decision-making and cost control.
• The ongoing development of the governance reporting engine shows a commitment to continuous improvement and adaptation to new AWS features and services.