What is AWS Organizations?
AWS Organizations is a service for central management and governance of multiple AWS accounts. It enables consolidated billing, policy-based controls with Service Control Policies (SCPs), and automated account creation.
For enterprises with multiple teams or projects, Organizations provides the necessary structure for isolation, cost allocation, and central security controls.
Core Features
- Consolidated Billing: One invoice for all accounts with aggregated usage
- Service Control Policies (SCPs) and Resource Control Policies (RCPs): Central governance policies across accounts, covering both identity-based and resource-based controls
- Organizational Units (OUs): Hierarchical grouping of accounts
- Automated account creation: Programmatic account creation via CLI, SDK, or API, combinable with AWS Control Tower and CloudFormation StackSets
- Delegated Administration: Delegation of service management to member accounts
Typical Use Cases
Multi-Account Strategy: Separation of workloads into separate accounts for isolation, compliance, and cost allocation. Typical structure: Production, Staging, Development, Shared Services.
Central Security: SCPs and RCPs prevent risky actions and unintended resource access across all accounts, e.g., disabling CloudTrail or using unapproved regions. AWS CloudTrail can be enabled organization-wide and cannot be turned off by member accounts.
Cost Management: Consolidated Billing aggregates usage from all accounts into a single invoice. Cost Allocation Tags and AWS Cost Explorer enable tracking and reporting by project or team.
Benefits
- Free to use, no additional charges for the Organizations service itself
- Consolidated billing across all accounts
- Central governance without manual account configuration
- Integration with AWS Control Tower for Landing Zones, plus GuardDuty, IAM Access Analyzer, Macie, and AWS Config for central security and compliance
Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory supports you with AWS Organizations: We help with multi-account strategy, OU structure, SCP and RCP design, and setting up AWS Control Tower Landing Zones.
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is AWS Organizations?
AWS Organizations is a service for central management of multiple AWS accounts. It enables consolidated billing, policy-based controls, and automated account creation for enterprise-scale governance.
What are Service Control Policies (SCPs)?
SCPs are policies that define maximum permissions for all accounts in an organization or Organizational Unit. They enable central governance controls like preventing certain regions or services. Resource Control Policies (RCPs) complement SCPs by centrally controlling how resources can be accessed, regardless of which account attempts the access.
What does AWS Organizations cost?
AWS Organizations is free. You only pay for AWS resources used in individual accounts. Consolidated Billing also offers volume discounts across all accounts.
What is an Organizational Unit (OU)?
OUs are containers for grouping accounts within an organization. They enable hierarchical policy application, e.g., different SCPs for production, development, and sandbox accounts.
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