Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), announced yesterday that multiple AWS accounts can now be managed with better management. This service, which provides policy-based management, is now generally available. The new free service allows organizations to manage multiple AWS accounts from one place. Instead of dealing with each account individually using custom scripts or manual processes, it allows for central management. How do organizations manage multiple accounts? Yesterday’s blog post by Jeff Barr, AWS spokesperson, stated that sometimes organizations adopt AWS incrementally or organically. This allows for individual teams and divisions to make the transition to cloud computing on a decentralized basis. Other companies expand through mergers or acquisitions and assume responsibility for existing accounts. Others create multiple accounts to ensure compliance or to create an isolation barrier between applications. Some even go so far as to use separate accounts for development, testing, and production. Access control policies can now be centrally managed for all accounts, single accounts, or groups of accounts. This can be done in a variety of ways: through AWS Management Console, the AWS Command Line Interface, or programmatically via the service’s API. Yesterday, the company announced that AWS Organizations allow you to create Service Control Policies (SCPs), which centrally control AWS service usage across multiple AWS accounts. Organizations can also be used to automate the creation and management of new accounts via APIs. Organizations makes it easier to bill multiple accounts. It allows you to set up a single payment method for all accounts within your organization through consolidated billing. The service’s Web site, which is available in preview since Nov. 29th, details three examples of how enterprises can use it.

To comply with compliance and corporate security policies, control the use of AWS services.
Automate the creation and management of AWS accounts for various resources.
For development and production resources, create different accounts.

The new service is free to all regions, except China (Beijing), and AWS GovCloud(US).