The Problem

The Client had a large cost saving target & had identified their Azure spend as a source of potential cost savings.

• No standard process for identifying accountability for cost savings opportunities, communicating & executing on recommendations.
• All cost savings initiatives were being managed as projects, but no operational capability was in place to sustainably drive cloud efficiency.

What we did  

Tailored CSXs FinOps Process to integrate seamlessly with clients existing finance, IT processes & teams.

• Trained & coached a new FinOps team within the client to run the new process using live cost savings opportunities.
• We Identified over €1m euros in cost reductions in the areas of:
• Optimised Virtual Machine Reservations
• Licenses
• Unused Cloud Resources
• Under utilised VM & Storage
• Scheduled start / stop of resources

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Summary of approach.

Identify pilot stakeholders

• Hold Finance, Cloud & Business workshops with key stakeholders to explain what FinOps and ask questions to gather intel on how the cloud is used.
• Create templates for Opportunity, Recommendation & Initiative tracking / capture
• Analyse Cloud resource tags and compile a tagging compliancy report.
• Analyse subsets of the cloud bill specific to Pilot stakeholders to identify target opportunities.
• Analyse full cloud estate to identify instance reservation Opportunities.
• Classify Opportunities into Quick-Wins, Strategic, Housekeeping.
• Agree with key stakeholders on what opportunities to move forward with for the pilot.
• Inform Pilot customers of the Recommendations & Tagging Compliance.
• Once changes have been implemented do Analysis of the cost for the Stakeholders cloud resources to show the before & after cost.
• Create Recommendations & detailed Requirements for how to automate the identification & delivery of cost savings opportunities in the future.
• Defined the plan to launch and expand FinOps going forward.

Benefits and Value

Save:

• Identified €1.6m in cost reduction opportunities.
• Enabled FinOps team to initiate €1.1m of cost reduction initiatives.

Sustain:

• Delivered an effective foundational FinOps process.
• Embedded the process with the clients FinOps Team.

Systemise:

• Defined & proposed three key automation initiatives:
• Right Size definition
• Utilisation Reporting
• VM Reservation Management

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