Autopilot (Consolidated Billing)
What is Autopilot?
Autopilot allows North to efficiently create and oversee monthly discount reservations, delivering substantial cost savings to your account without requiring significant human intervention.
Our cutting-edge service continually monitors your usage patterns. Whenever an opportunity for savings arises, we take the initiative to secure the reservation on your behalf. That means you can benefit from the savings without risky and unnecessary long-term reservation costs.
All Autopilot-generated savings are fully backed by our Buyback & Flex program and safeguarded by our comprehensive MSA protection.
Autopilot is powered by North's AWS Consolidated Billing practice, allowing customers to elect to have their AWS costs routed to North as their registered AWS reseller. North manages group bought Savings Plans and Reserved Instances at the group layer based on aggregate usage trends. Customers using this service only pay for the exact discounts that they consume in that usage month.
What is consolidated billing?
Consolidated billing is an authorization for your AWS account(s) to join an AWS organization (North), in which North agrees to bill your company for the charges associated to your account each month.
North offers a Fully Managed service which operates its savings program through consolidated billing, allowing customers to consume shared three-year discounting credits with term flexibility.
Can North change anything on our AWS account via consolidated billing?
No. We keep all service controls off by default and allows our customers to audit at any time. Our setup is a standard AWS reseller mechanism that manages and bills customers.
What is discount sharing?
Discount sharing allows customers in a consolidated billing group to share discount reservations and credits. North will make and manage discounting reservations and share them to your AWS account(s). This allows you to achieve the cost benefits of long-term reservation unit pricing without the traditional long-term commitment.
What happens if we don't use all of our reservation in a given month?
If you don't utilize all of your discount credit or reservation, we try to find a home for the underutilized savings . This is done automatically by AWS, and any discount utilization that is consumed by another account, will be billed to the consuming account by percentage of amortized cost value consumed in that month. This results in other clients benefiting from your underutilized savings. North will only bill you based on your actual savings.
Do we have to use consolidated billing to consume your subscription based AWS discounts?
No. Most customers choose to still manage their own billing group, in which case we suggest using our Savings Pods.
Does North manage any policies for my company via consolidated billing?
North only uses organizations for consolidated billing, meaning we won’t be able to centrally apply the advanced management features. You can view which features the organization has enabled by visiting the AWS Organzations console.
Service control policy documentation: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_manage_policies_scps.html?icmpid=docs_orgs_email&ref_=pe_2547550_191713980
What is AWS organization & management accounts? https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_integrate_services_list.html?icmpid=docs_orgs_email&ref_=pe_2547550_191713980
For Customers Looking to Use North For Consolidated Billing Only:
Connecting to Consolidated Billing Group
North supports its customers and managed discounting through AWS consolidated billing. When moving from self-managed billing to partner-consolidated billing, customers must join our consolidating billing pod. Please note this does not apply to our Savings Pods service.
Enabling Discount Sharing for Savings Plans & Reserved Instances
Once your account has joined North, we require customers to enable discount sharing. This feature allows your account to receive discount credits that North makes on your behalf.
Disconnecting From or Deleting Source/Original Payer/Management Account
AWS hierarchy requires all AWS root accounts to have a connection to a payer account. This allows an account's usage to bill to a single paying account. When joining North customers need to disconnect from their payer account and join the North account pod. This is a standard process when joining a consolidated billing organization. Please note that this does not apply to our Savings Pods service.
How can I leave my existing payer account group?
What if my payer account is the same as my AWS root account?
This is also common practice. It simply means that your AWS organization/management account is created by and managed by the same account as your AWS account. In this case, you would need to delete the organization. This would automatically convert your account from a payer account to a standalone AWS account. Please note that this is not required for our Savings Pods service.
Are there security concerns or risk with deleting, changing or leaving an AWS organization?
There is no risk of service change or product usage interruption. In limited cases, an organization will have some security control policies in place that are automatically applied to member accounts. Please confirm this is not the case. Additionally, if your company uses AWS organizations for SSO this would cause a change. Please consult with your technical team and North if this is the case. New customers would need to re-apply any organization level IAM or SCPs to the account level. Please note that this is not required for our Savings Pods service.
AWS Organizations Overview
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