About the client
Industry:Banking & FSI
Location:Australia
In the financial industry, banks face unique challenges when it comes to managing cloud costs effectively. As technology continues to drive innovation, and customer expectations evolve, banks increasingly rely on hybrid and multi-cloud environments, such as the combination of AWS, Azure and VMware, to meet their complex infrastructure needs. However, with this cloud complexity comes the need for judicious cost control to ensure profitability and competitiveness.
Challenge
Optimizing a hybrid cloud without compromising on CX and compliance
Our Australian banking client faced similar challenges. As customer expectations increased and regulatory compliance became more stringent, the bank’s hybrid cloud setup quite effectively offered the flexibility and scalability necessary to support diverse workload placement. However, it also introduced complexities in monitoring, analysing and managing costs across multiple cloud providers.
We recommended implementation of FinOps practices but certain hurdles first needed to be overcome. They included:
- The bank’s cloud teams required training on FinOps practices since their introduction to FinOps was still in its nascent stages.
- There was insufficient integration between FinOps tools and cloud services, on-premise or public.
- The absence of a centralized Cloud Centre of Excellence team to manage FinOps was strongly felt.
Solution
A FinOps enablement plan to drive a user-friendly, agile and scalable portal
The Cloud Kinetics solution included many important steps.
- We first introduced the bank to business on FinOps
- We designed and developed a user-friendly web-based portal that seamlessly integrated with an orchestration tool
- The portal provided users with a one-click capability to efficiently right-size and decommission virtual machines (VMs) within the on-premise cloud infrastructure.
- Public cloud native tools were used for FinOps
- A FinOps Enablement Plan was implemented along with relevant training sessions for all the associated personnel
- Productivity targets were set such that cost savings were enhanced
- To monitor progress, the cost savings achieved were tracked and compared against the targets, and monthly reports were sent to the finance team
- Robust FinOps governance was implemented to ensure that actionable insights derived from the data, were effectively implemented on a monthly basis, facilitating continuous improvement and sustainable financial optimization.
The implementation of FinOps principles brought significant success across multiple dimensions for the bank.
Success Metrics
Efficiency boost and drop in operational costs
The bank saw $2.4M+ cost savings from cloud optimization in 6 months from FinOps implementation. Operational costs dropped by 15 percent and saved the bank $16 million.
Speed: In terms of speed, the process workflow witnessed a remarkable improvement as a result of the web-based self-service portal. With just a single click, users were able to swiftly right-size and decommission on-premises instances, leading to a smoother and more efficient process overall.
Cloud optimization: The business also achieved remarkable cloud optimization, successfully reducing operational costs by 15% for both on-premises and public cloud expenditure, which amounted to a staggering $16 million.
Process improvement: This cost reduction demonstrated the effectiveness of the FinOps framework. It empowered the Business and DevOps teams with self-service capabilities that were facilitated by tools like Apptio Cloudability along with a central COE FinOps team.
By embracing these FinOps practices, the bank not only achieved tangible financial benefits but it also paved the way for continuous process improvement and sustainable cost optimization in their cloud operations.
