Who This Guide Is For
This guide is for cloud buyers, FinOps practitioners, and engineering leads who manage AWS spend through WavePRO — Alphaus' end-user platform that comes with Ripple. If your MSP has enabled Guaranteed Commitments for your account, this guide walks you through exactly how to use WavePRO to plan commitments confidently, reduce coverage risk, and track what you hold.
Why This Process Matters
Buying Reserved Instances or Savings Plans without analysis is one of the most common — and costly — mistakes in cloud FinOps. Commit too aggressively and you're paying for capacity you're not using. Commit too conservatively and you're leaving 30–40% discounts on the table.
WavePRO addresses this by grounding every commitment decision in your actual historical usage. And because commitments are guaranteed, the downside risk is fundamentally changed: if your monthly savings go negative after the lock-in period, the shortfall is refunded — bringing your net savings back to zero.
The Two Areas of WavePRO You Need to Know
WavePRO's Guaranteed Commitments functionality is organized into two sections:
Commitment Planner — Where you review commitment plan recommendations generated from your historical usage, and purchase Guaranteed Commitments.
Commitment Inventory — Where you track the commitments you've purchased.
💡Note: Access to both sections requires your MSP to have enabled Guaranteed Commitments for your account via Ripple.
Part 1: Commitment Planner
What It Does
The Commitment Planner analyzes your historical AWS usage — pulled from your connected Cost and Usage Report (CUR) — and generates commitment plan recommendations.
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The commitment planner has two tabs: Recommended Plans and Submitted & Executed Plans.
Recommended Plans Tab
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This tab lists all generated plan recommendations for your account. Each plan is shown with the following columns:
Column | What It Shows |
Plan | The name of the recommended plan (e.g., Flexible, Recommended v5, Balanced v2 1y) |
Monthly Discount | The estimated monthly savings if this plan is applied |
Annual Discount | The projected annual savings |
Coverage Rate Change | The change in the commitment coverage rate after applying the plan |
Breakeven | The number of days until the plan breaks even |
Click any plan to open its full detail view.
Understanding a Plan's Detail View
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Each plan detail page is organized into the following sections:
Plan Overview — A summary of what the plan does, its key benefits, and the commitment type (e.g., flexible GRI commitments with automatic refunds after 30 days).
Savings — Shows the monthly discount amount, broken down by Risk Premium and on-demand costs, along with a cost comparison percentage showing how much lower your commitment cost is versus equivalent on-demand spend.
Breakeven Analysis — Shows the breakeven period (in days) and the expected breakeven date, with a chart illustrating projected cumulative savings over time.
Coverage After Plan — Shows your current coverage rate, the additional coverage this plan adds, and your total coverage rate after applying the plan.
Plan Details — A summary of key plan parameters:
Monthly Discount
Total Monthly Cost (broken down into Monthly Cost and Risk Premium)
Upfront Cost
Minimum Term
Services Covered — A table showing each AWS service covered by the plan, its service coverage rate, monthly cost, and monthly discount amount.
How This Plan Works — An expandable section explaining the plan mechanics, including: plan overview, safety guarantees, operations, what you don't need to manage, and how reserved discounts are managed.
Understanding the Plan Recommendations
Recommendations are presented across three available plans, each with a different lock-in period and savings profile:
Plan | Description | Minimum Term |
Flexible | 30-day GRI commitments for all reservable services. Unused discounts are automatically refunded after 30 days. | 30 days
|
High Discount
| 1-year GRI and native commitments for all reservable services. Lower Risk Premium rate with deeper long-term savings. | 365 days
|
1 + 3 Years
| 1-year GRI and 3-year native commitments. Deepest available savings for stable, long-term workloads. | 365 days
|
What the guarantee covers:
Discounts and refunds are automatically settled every month — no manual management required.
If discounts are not realized, the difference is automatically refunded. Your costs will never exceed on-demand pricing after the lock-in period.
RI/SPs are managed in a dedicated AWS account within your organization. You can verify them in WavePRO or the AWS Console.
The Risk Premium is the cost of the guarantee — calculated as a percentage of your realized monthly savings, not a flat fee. This means:
If utilization drops and savings decrease, the Risk Premium decreases proportionally.
If monthly savings reach zero, no Risk Premium is charged.
After the lock-in period, if monthly savings go negative, the gap is refunded, bringing your net savings back to zero.
How the underlying native RI/SP term is determined: You don't choose the native AWS commitment term. The system automatically selects the native RI/SP that maximizes savings — typically a 3-year commitment, where available, or a 1-year term for services where a 3-year term isn't offered (e.g., RDS).
Choosing between plans:
Flexible (30-Day): Best for services with unpredictable usage, new service trials, or environments with changing scale. This is the shortest lock-in period with minimal commitment risk.
High Discount (1-Year): Best for stable workloads where you're confident in sustained usage. Lower Risk Premium rate and stronger net savings than the Flexible plan.
1 + 3 Years: Best for workloads with high confidence in long-term usage stability. Deepest available savings through a combination of 1-year GRI and 3-year native commitments.
Once you've reviewed the options, select the plan that fits your risk tolerance and savings goals. Because these are Guaranteed Commitments, your downside exposure is bounded — the guarantee backstops under-utilization risk in ways standard RIs and SPs do not.
Decision framework:
Variable or uncertain usage → Flexible (30-Day) to limit lock-in exposure while still capturing commitment discounts.
Stable, predictable workload → High Discount (1-Year) for the lower Risk Premium rate and better net savings.
High confidence in long-term usage → 1 + 3 Years for the deepest available savings.
New to Guaranteed Commitments → Start with the Flexible (30-Day) plan to build confidence in your usage patterns, then evaluate moving to a longer-term plan.
Purchasing
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Once you've reviewed the recommendations and selected a plan, click Apply Plan to purchase the Guaranteed Commitment.
💡Note: The Guaranteed Commitments Service only covers native commitments purchased through managed accounts. Existing AWS RIs or Savings Plans purchased independently cannot be migrated into the program.
Submitted & Executed Plans Tab
This tab shows all plans you have submitted for purchase or that have already been executed. Each entry displays:
Column | What It Shows |
Plan | The name of the plan |
Monthly Discount | The monthly savings amount |
Min. Commit | The minimum commitment amount |
Coverage | The commitment coverage rate |
Breakeven | The breakeven period in days |
Status | Either Executed (active, committed) or Pending (submitted, awaiting execution), completed |
Click any plan to open its detail view. For executed plans, the detail view includes all the same sections as the Recommended Plans detail view, plus:
Committed on — The date the commitment was executed.
Status — Shown as Executed with the commitment date, confirming the plan is active.
Savings — For executed plans, this reflects actual realized savings: Monthly Savings, Monthly Commitment Cost, Monthly On-Demand Cost, and Monthly Cost Comparison percentage.
Services Covered — A per-service breakdown showing Service Covered percentage (with High / Medium / Low coverage badges), Monthly Cost, and Monthly Savings for each service (e.g., Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon EKS).
Part 2: Commitment Inventory
What It Shows
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The Commitment Inventory is your ledger of Guaranteed Commitments you've purchased. For each active commitment, you can see:
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Service type and commitment plan
Expiration date
Utilization — The current utilization rate of your commitment. Higher utilization means your commitment is being used more effectively.
Cost Reduction Effect — The monthly cost and monthly savings generated by the commitment.
How to Use It
Ongoing tracking: Check the inventory monthly — or ahead of any major workload changes — to confirm that active commitments are being utilized as expected.
Renewal planning: Use expiration dates as your renewal calendar. Begin the planning process 30–45 days before a commitment expires to avoid gaps in coverage. Return to the Commitment Planner to generate a fresh set of recommendations based on your latest usage data.
Utilization review: Keep in mind that since the Risk Premium is tied to realized savings, lower utilization means a lower premium — not a fixed cost you're stuck paying.
End-to-End Workflow Summary
Here's the recommended sequence for a first-time setup and an ongoing steady-state cadence:
First-Time Setup
Confirm with your MSP that Guaranteed Commitments are enabled for your account in Ripple.
Open Commitment Planner and go to the Recommended Plans tab to review your first set of recommendations. Click into a plan to review the full detailed view, including savings breakdown, breakeven analysis, coverage impact, and services covered.
Select the plan appropriate to your workload (Flexible Plan if usage history is limited or workload is variable).
Click Apply Plan to purchase your first Guaranteed Commitment.
Check the Submitted & Executed Plans tab to confirm your plan appears, then check the Commitment Inventory to confirm your commitments are reflected. Note that there may be a short delay before purchased commitments appear.
Ongoing Steady-State (Monthly)
Commitment Inventory → Review active commitments and confirm utilization is healthy.
Commitment Planner → Check for updated recommendations as your usage patterns evolve.
Common Questions
"What happens if my usage drops?"
After the lock-in period, if your total monthly savings go negative, the shortfall is refunded — bringing your net savings back to zero.
"What if utilization drops but savings are still positive?"
The Risk Premium adjusts proportionally. A drop in utilization means a lower premium that month — not a penalty.
"Can I bring my existing AWS RIs or Savings Plans into the program?"
No. The Guaranteed Commitments Service only covers native commitments purchased through managed accounts. Existing commitments cannot be migrated.
"How accurate are the Commitment Planner recommendations?"
Accuracy improves with usage history. For new accounts, treat initial recommendations as directional. Revisit the planner after 30–60 days for higher-confidence recommendations as more usage history accumulates.
"How can I tell if my plan is active?"
Go to Commitment Planner > Submitted & Executed Plans. Plans with an Executed status are active. Click into the plan to see the commitment date, current savings, and per-service coverage details.
Next Steps
Ready to run your first plan? Log in to WavePRO and navigate to Commitment Planner.
Not seeing Guaranteed Commitment options? Contact your MSP — they need to enable access via Ripple before purchase options appear.