A globally recognised leader in air care solutions, the customer operates in diverse markets, offering sustainable and innovative air cleaning systems for industrial and commercial sectors. With an increasing reliance on Microsoft Azure for their cloud operations, the company recognised the need for a more structured approach to cost management and financial accountability. Their objective was clear: to gain better control over their cloud expenditure while ensuring the Azure environment remained efficient, secure, and scalable.
As the customer’s Azure usage grew, so did the complexity of managing costs. They faced several significant challenges:
- Rising Cloud Costs: Inefficient use of Azure resources, particularly oversized and underutilised virtual machines (VMs), led to unnecessary spending. Without proper monitoring, resource costs often exceeded expectations.
- Lack of Cost Visibility: Teams struggled to track and understand where their budgets were being spent. This lack of transparency made it difficult to identify areas for optimisation or hold teams accountable for their resource usage.
- Inefficient Resource Management: Non-production environments were consuming resources even during off-peak hours, creating additional waste and inflating costs.
- Limited Financial Accountability: With no clear ownership of resources, aligning cloud spending with broader business goals was a challenge.
- Scalability Concerns: The existing cloud environment lacked the flexibility to adapt cost strategies as usage increased, making it difficult to scale efficiently.
These challenges underscored the need for a robust FinOps framework to bring costs under control, improve operational efficiency, and enable the company to maximise the value of their cloud investment.
InfraShift Solutions designed and implemented a tailored FinOps strategy to address these challenges, focusing on cost transparency, optimisation, and proactive management:
- Cost Tracking and Reporting: We developed a detailed cost tracking system to provide clear insights into Azure spending. This system enabled teams to monitor their usage, identify inefficiencies, and make informed decisions.
- Resource Optimisation: Through a comprehensive assessment, we identified underutilised and oversized resources, particularly VMs, and resized them to better align with actual workloads. This reduced waste while maintaining performance.
- Automation Implementation: To address inefficiencies in non-production environments, we implemented automation pipelines that powered down VMs during off-peak hours. This drastically reduced costs associated with idle resources.
- Optimised Licensing and Commitments: We integrated existing software licences into the Azure environment and recommended the use of reserved instances for predictable workloads. These actions helped lower costs while leveraging the customer’s current investments.
- Governance and Accountability: A governance framework was established to assign clear ownership of resources to individual teams. This empowered them to manage their budgets effectively and align spending with business objectives.
- Continuous Improvement Framework: We created a roadmap for ongoing FinOps improvements, including regular cost reviews, workshops, and proactive optimisation strategies.
By combining these measures, we not only addressed the immediate cost challenges but also built a scalable and sustainable framework for long-term cloud financial management.
The implementation of the FinOps strategy delivered significant benefits for the customer:
- Cost Reductions: Cloud expenditure was reduced through rightsizing, automation, and licensing optimisation. These savings freed up budget for other critical initiatives while ensuring operational efficiency.
- Improved Visibility and Accountability: Teams gained the tools and insights needed to monitor and manage their cloud costs effectively. This shift fostered a culture of financial accountability and transparency across the organisation.
- Operational Efficiency: Automation of non-production resource management eliminated unnecessary spending during non-peak hours, ensuring resources were only used when needed.
- Strategic Alignment: By aligning cloud spending with business objectives, the customer was able to maximise the value of their Azure environment and position their IT infrastructure as a key enabler of growth.
- Future Scalability: The new FinOps framework ensured the customer could adapt cost strategies as their cloud environment evolved, providing a foundation for continued success.
To ensure the sustainability of these outcomes, InfraShift Solutions proposed a series of next steps:
- Regular Cost Reviews: Establish a schedule for quarterly reviews to identify new optimisation opportunities and ensure the FinOps strategy evolves with the customer’s needs.
- Workshops and Training: Conduct workshops to deepen financial awareness across teams, equipping them with the skills needed to manage cloud costs effectively.
- Advanced Optimisation Strategies: Explore additional measures such as advanced analytics, cost forecasting, and workload placement strategies to further refine cloud spending.
- Ongoing Support: Provide continuous advisory and technical support to help the customer adapt to changes in cloud usage and industry trends.
These steps are designed to maintain momentum and ensure the customer continues to realise the full benefits of their FinOps framework.
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