How a Cloud Financial Management Platform Transformed Cloud Spend for a Cybersecurity Company

Effectively managing Cloud spend is crucial for an organization’s financial health and operational efficiency. One leading cybersecurity software company, spending $15 million annually on Cloud services, faced significant challenges as its Cloud environment became increasingly unwieldy due to multiple acquisitions. The organization’s finance team recognized the need for a more strategic approach to managing Cloud costs. It turned to their senior director of DevOps, who served as the de facto Cloud cost owner, to lead the effort.

The Challenge: Lack of Visibility and Control Over Cloud Spend

The company’s finance team was deeply concerned about escalating Cloud costs, exacerbated by years of inadequate cost allocation visibility across the organization’s products and services. The DevOps team, focused on building cutting-edge security products, acknowledged that their existing resource tagging strategy was insufficient for gaining the insights necessary to control Cloud spend effectively.

Tagging across old and new infrastructure was sparse and inconsistent, leaving the DevOps and finance teams with poor visibility into Cloud spend by product, team, environment, and other critical dimensions. This lack of detailed attribution made it impossible to optimize Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans (SPs), identify waste, or understand the true cost of goods sold (COGS).

The Solution: Implementing a Robust Cloud FinOps Strategy

After evaluating several Cloud FinOps solutions, the organization partnered with a third-party Cloud services consultant known for their expertise in financial operations strategies. Together, they developed a comprehensive plan to design and implement a tagging strategy to provide the necessary metadata to manage Cloud investments effectively.

The first step in the strategy was to gain full visibility into Cloud spend through meticulous resource tagging. The team implemented granular tagging across all infrastructure, old and new, to attribute spending by critical business dimensions. They also created a tagging taxonomy that ensured visibility and consistency across the organization.

With accurate and consistent tagging, the organization could gain insights into Cloud resource usage, allowing them to right-size overprovisioned resources, optimize RIs and SPs, identify waste, and forecast Cloud spend more accurately.

The Impact: Significant Cost Savings and Enhanced Financial Visibility

Within three months of launching the new FinOps strategy, the organization achieved complete visibility into its Cloud spend. RI coverage increased by over 50%, resulting in nearly $3 million in annual savings. 

The improved visibility provided the organization’s CFO with the data needed to present the executive team with a clear picture of the financial performance of each product and service. This level of insight enabled the company to make informed decisions about sunsetting products and services that were not generating sufficient revenue, further optimizing their Cloud investments.

This use case demonstrates the transformative impact of a robust Cloud FinOps strategy underpinned by a powerful Cloud financial management platform. By implementing a detailed tagging strategy and gaining full visibility into Cloud spend, the company was able to optimize its Cloud investments, reduce costs, and align Cloud spending with business objectives.

For organizations looking to manage and optimize their Cloud spend more effectively, investing in a Cloud financial management platform that finance professionals can understand and act upon is essential. Such platforms provide the tools and insights needed to drive significant cost savings, improve financial accountability, and ensure that Cloud investments deliver maximum strategic value.

For more information on how your organization can transform your Cloud FinOps and better manage your Cloud spend, read our whitepaper, "5 Essential Capabilities CFOs Need to Understand and Manage Cloud Spend."