AWS Business Models: Consolidated and Standalone

AWS Consolidated Business Model

In the Consolidated business model, the service provider will own the AWS Organization and all the AWS customer accounts will be created under such Organization. This will allow the provider to have a consolidated bill for all the accounts in the Organization. This means that the provider will pay a consolidated bill, which will then be split between the different accounts in the AWS Organization. In the example below, the service provider runs its own AWS organization, which hosts its own consolidated bill.

When a service provider's partner finds a customer that wishes to use AWS resources, the customer’s AWS account is either created or brought under the service provider's AWS Organization as a member account.

All the usage and spend generated by the AWS Accounts will be consolidated under a single bill.
The customer will be provided with an IAM user with full administrative permissions to access their AWS account.

End customer AWS accounts under the service provider's consolidated bill are referred to as “Accounts under consolidation”.

AWS Standalone Business Model

The AWS Standalone business model is intended for customers who need to have their own AWS organization, rather than using the service provider’s organization. This will allow partners to take advantage of certain functionalities that are only available to AWS organizations.

Note: AWS currently does not support nested Organizations; a separate AWS Organization cannot be consolidated under another AWS Organization.

In this scenario, a new AWS Account running AWS Organizations is created or an existing AWS Organization can be transferred over to the provider. These AWS Organizations will exist as separate entities: they will hold their own Consolidated Bill, but the provider will be the payer on record for the account. We refer to these accounts as “Standalone Master Payers”.

Reasons why customers would need their own AWS Organization

AWS Organizations provide centralized management, account grouping, and consolidated billing to the AWS Accounts joined to the Organization as Member accounts. While all AWS Organizations will provide a consolidated bill, Organizations that are set up with “All Features” enabled can provide additional security feature and support specific AWS Services.

There are multiple use cases where partners or customers would require their own AWS Organization:

The partner is acting as an MSP and providing value-add services to their customer’s accounts. For example: Providing managed security or fully managing their end customers.
The end customer is utilizing AWS Services like AWS Control Tower or AWS Single Sign-on (SSO).
The end customer is utilizing AWS Organizations for Service Control Policies (SCPs) or to enforce Resource Tags using Tag Policies.
The end customer is participating in any Enterprise Agreements or Private Pricing Agreements that are directly associated with an AWS Account ID: Enterprise Discount Program (EDP), Enterprise Support, Partner Led Support, etc.
The end customer wants to utilize Savings Plans under the AWS Distribution Program.