$2M+ Cost Savings From FinOps For A Financial Organization

Optimizing cloud usage in a multi-cloud environment

• The organization worked in a multi-cloud environment with varying workload placement requirements that demanded varying configurations, security measures and performance characteristics, all of which needed to be managed efficiently for optimal performance.
• The organization was still in the early stages of its FinOps journey and the FinOps Framework was yet to be implemented. This step was urgently needed so that the organization could gain visibility into their cloud spend and manage it effectively.
• Although the FinOps Cloudability tool had been integrated into the client’s cloud ecosystem, its benefits had not been completely leveraged.
• The business and DevOps teams needed to be trained further on FinOps practices so that cloud usage, costs and business objectives could all be aligned.
• The client required a centralized Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE) team of experts to manage its FinOps practices.

Monitor, track and analyse usage and costs to optimize cloud usage

The Cloud Kinetics FinOps team addressed the challenges and enabled the organization to optimize their cloud services.

• The business and DevOps teams were trained and educated further on FinOps practices so that they could make cost-conscious decisions about the organization’s cloud usage.
• We helped the team establish and implement a comprehensive FinOps Framework that outlined roles, responsibilities, processes and the tools required to optimize cloud usage and costs.
• The potential of the FinOps Cloudability tool was explained and demonstrated so that the team felt empowered to utilize the monitoring, analysing and optimizing powers of the tool. Apptio was our working partner for this exercise.
• A robust monitoring and optimization strategy was set up to track cloud costs, usage patterns, and performance metrics. 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.
• We helped the organization develop and execute an enablement plan that specifically examined the top ten spenders within the business. They were then guided on how to optimize their cloud usage and thereby, costs. By focusing on the top spenders, the organization set up a culture of cost-consciousness.
• We collaborated with AWS Cloud Academy to provide the teams with introductory and advanced training courses on FinOps practices.
• We helped integrate the FinOps Cloudability tool with the organization’s ServiceNow platform to promote self-service actions. This move encouraged the teams to take ownership of their cloud costs and take data-driven decisions to optimize their cloud usage.

The adoption of these practices helped the organization establish a strong foundation for efficient and cost-effective cloud operations.

The financial organization saw a 32% cost reduction from FinOps initiatives in 6 months. Operational costs dropped by 15 percent by an amount of $14 million.

Speed: By implementing and boosting their self-service capabilities using GorillaStack for automation and hibernating their Dev/Test Instances, there were significant improvements in speed. Automation streamlined the development and testing process and teams could now spin up and tear down environments whenever required.

The adoption of the centralized Cloudability Tool provided actionable insights for optimization, and effectively boosted the speed and efficiency of cloud operations.

Cloud optimization: The organization’s on-demand public cloud spend dropped by 15 percent, which amounted to a sizable $14 million. The organization’s commitment to optimizing cloud usage and implementing cost-saving measures saw significant success.

Process improvement: The successful implementation of the FinOps framework, combined with the increased self-service capabilities for business and DevOps teams using Cloudability resulted in substantial process improvements. The central Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE) FinOps team drove the organization’s efforts to foster a culture of cost-consciousness across the board.

Cloud Kinetics’ efforts to help the financial organization achieve significant milestones bore fruit. Operations were streamlined, costs dropped and the organization saw tangible results in their efforts to optimize usage in a multi-cloud environment.