Centralizing payments in AWS Marketplace with consolidated billing

AWS Marketplace is a curated digital catalog that lists thousands of software solutions with flexible pricing options. SaaS contracts, hourly billing, annual licenses, and private offers are examples of different payment options to choose from. Typically, when customers are in the procurement process, they use multiple linked accounts to subscribe to these products with several pricing models, which makes the billing process difficult to manage. In this post, I take you through the pricing models in AWS Marketplace and give you a simple mechanism to mainta­­­­in your billing information from one central account using AWS Organizations.

This post assumes a working knowledge of AWS Organizations, which you can acquire through this blog post. You can either create new accounts or use existing accounts for this blog post so that you are able to set up a hierarchy of master and linked member accounts.

How do I set up my accounts with AWS Organizations?

First, log in to the account you’d like to appoint as the master account. This is the account for which you’ll receive a single bill for all your accounts. Then use the AWS Organizations console to set up consolidated billing. This feature enables you to receive one bill for multiple accounts, easily track charges on each account, and combine usage from multiple accounts for volume pricing discounts. Before you get started, read the best practices for setting up a multi-account billing strategy.

My sample scenario uses one master account and three member accounts in AWS Organizations. The setup should look like the following image.

What are the pricing options available for software solutions in AWS Marketplace?

Before I begin to select and deploy software solutions from AWS Marketplace in the provisioned accounts, I’ll review the different pricing models available in AWS Marketplace.

The following table lists the pricing models available in AWS Marketplace. A pricing model consists of two main pricing components: software cost and infrastructure cost. The software seller controls the software pricing, and AWS defines the infrastructure cost.

Note: AWS infrastructure cost is priced by the hour, based on the instance type. You’re charged once a month for $0.10 per GB-month of provisioned storage. The estimated cost assumes Amazon EC2 On-Demand Instances but doesn’t include data transfer fees. For lower prices, you can use Reserved Instances or Spot Instances.

This is a brief summary of the pricing models available. For more information, see details on product pricing.

Walkthrough

In this scenario, I use a combination of one master account and three member accounts. I have chosen the following three products with different pricing models:

• Master Account: No deployments
• Member Account 1: TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS (hourly)
• Member Account 2: Trend Micro Deep Security as a Service (SaaS subscription), TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS (hourly)
• Member Account 3: Foundry (SaaS contract), TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS (hourly)

The following image shows these details in the hierarchy of the master and member accounts.

Step 1: Grant appropriate permissions to the member account users

I used the AWS managed policy AWSMarketplaceFullAccess to subscribe and deploy AWS Marketplace products in their environments.

Note: We advise that your procurement team accepts the end user license agreement (EULA) on behalf of your organization only after legal review.

For more information about how to create an Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy and attach it to a principal, see Creating IAM Policies and Adding and Removing IAM Policies.

Step 2: Subscribe to and deploy products in AWS Marketplace from the member accounts

In this case, the user from your procurement team needs to subscribe to an AWS Marketplace product from the AWS Management Console.

Important: For pricing and consolidated billing for Seller Private Offers, the procurement team must first subscribe to the product with your master account. All subscriptions for member accounts are blocked pending the master account subscriptions.

To subscribe to the product:

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS Marketplace Console at https://thinkwithwp.com/marketplace/.
2. In the Search text field, enter the product name (for example, Trend Micro Deep Security) and select the product from the search results.
3. Choose Continue to Subscribe, which takes you to the Terms and Conditions page.
4. For the dev, test, and prod account users, the procurement team should subscribe to TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS (Hourly), which provides you with an AMI pricing model of per host per hour. Choose any of the pricing options listed.
5. Review and accept terms specified in the seller’s EULA and the AWS Customer Agreement.
6. On the product pricing page, select the desired pricing model and click Continue to Subscribe.

7. Users with access to launch this AMI can choose Continue to Configuration and launch the AMI in the Region of their choice. For alternative deployment options, see Launching Jaspersoft for AWS and use an AWS CloudFormation template provided by the seller.

8. For the test account user, the procurement team should subscribe to Trend Micro Deep Security as a Service, which provides you with a SaaS subscription pricing model. To subscribe to the product, click Subscribe.

9. To set up your account with the software seller, click Set up your account, and you’ll be redirected to the appropriate set up page on the seller’s website.

10. For the prod account user, the procurement team should subscribe to Foundry SaaS Contract, which provides you with a SaaS contract pricing model. Once you click Continue to Subscribe, provide the quantity you need and your preferred contract length. You can also select the check box to opt in for automatic contract renewal. Once you’re ready, click Create Contract.

11. Similar to the previous product, to set up your account with the software seller, click Set Up Your Account and you’ll be redirected to the appropriate set up page on the seller’s website.

Step 3: Review your consolidated bill in the billing dashboard of the master account

Once your products are set up and running for at least one hour in the member accounts, you can see the billing information start flowing into the master account. To access the billing dashboard, choose Billing Dashboard under your account name. The following image shows the bill details consolidated by service in the payment summary.

The following image shows the details of the bill broken out by admin, dev, prod, and test.

You’ll also be able to see details for the dev, prod, and test accounts and the software deployed under each account.

The following image shows the bill details for the dev account, which is running the hourly AMI with TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS.

The following image shows the bill details for the prod account, which is running both TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS and Foundry SaaS Contract.

The following image shows the bill details for the test account, which is running both TIBCO Jaspersoft Reporting and Analytics for AWS and Trend Micro Deep Security as a Service.

Conclusion

In this post, I provided step-by-step instructions on how to set up consolidated billing through AWS Organizations. Now, you can easily manage with one bill, keep track of multiple accounts, and choose a pricing option that fits the need for each account.

If you have questions about implementing any of the solutions described in this blog post, you can start a new thread on the AWS Discussion Forum or contact AWS Support.

About the author

Sagar Khasnis is a Partner Solutions Architect focusing on AWS Marketplace and Service Catalog. He is passionate about building innovative solutions using AWS services to help customers achieve their business objectives.