Client story
Financial Management for
Microsoft Azure Cloud
Cloud adoption has become a necessity for continued business transformation, but, as this multinational oil company discovered, without strategic governance in place, costs can escalate rapidly.
By Insight Editor / 11 Dec 2020 / Topics: Cloud Software Microsoft Azure
Facts at a glance
Client industry:
Oil and gas
Size of company:
71,000 employees
Challenge:
Drive improved visibility, understanding and control of Azure cloud spend for a Fortune 50 company to help it achieve better cost predictability and optimize Microsoft investments.
Solution:
Through a collaborative process of discovery and solution architecting, Insight helped the client increase visibility and control of cloud costs, and identify additional Microsoft solutions for improved value.
Results
- Improved visibility of cloud spending
- Increased controls around utilization
- Identified additional Microsoft solutions
- $450,000 in trackable saving
With cloud adoption now critical for business success, our teams often find companies that migrate to the cloud reach out to us afterward for assistance with understanding and managing cloud costs and utilization. Cloud governance is a complex endeavor, and without adequate controls built in from the start, cloud costs can quickly run out of control.
Following a fast rate of cloud adoption, a Fortune 50 oil and gas company needed assistance with cloud financial management and reporting to gain a better understanding of its Azure cloud spend — specifically around utilization of Cloudyn, Azure Cost Management and Azure Advisor, among other tools. The company’s IT leaders wanted to better understand the costs associated with the Azure environment, and ensure they were using the most cost-effective resources and plans to align with business goals.
Enabling goals with governance
The company’s primary goal was ensuring maximum value from the tools already existing in its Azure environment. Insight was brought on board to help create custom views, dashboards and detailed recommendations on how to leverage these tools to improve the client’s financial cloud governance. We also ensured that the company had a complete understanding of the remediations being made to the current Azure scaffolding to enable these improvements.
The client’s secondary goals were to achieve better predictability in cost, as well as to leverage the resulting data to inform further decisions on Microsoft solutions.
Addressing cloud challenges
Many of the company’s challenges stemmed from a lack of controls around subscription creation and ownership, visibility and financial governance. With no visibility into resource utilization, the client was unable to determine whether workloads and resources were running efficiently.
The scope of work agreed upon with the client outlined the following services to be performed:
- Financial reporting and optimization employing the client’s current scaffolding and governance to increase controls around utilization and financial governance
- A tool or tools for visibility across operation and costs with custom views and dashboards for the resulting data to ensure efficient resource utilization and efficient workloads
- Recommendations and a design document on how to remediate the current scaffolding to enable a scalable and more easily managed and governed cloud environment
- Consultation regarding additional best-fit cloud financial management tools from Microsoft and protocols
A team-focused approach
Insight helped the client take control of the Azure environment using a three-phase process for discovering the cloud environment and business needs, defining the design, architecture and strategy of the cloud environment, and reducing risk. In every phase, Insight worked closely with the client’s teams to direct and execute the project.
In phase one of the process, our team leveraged creative problem-solving grounded in the client’s business strategy, architecture and organization. Meeting with key stakeholders to define challenges and opportunities, we reviewed the current environment and decided how to measure success for this effort, conceptualizing the desired solution and its design.
In phase two, our team refined the vision, conducted appropriate environmental and architectural assessments and provided a clear roadmap for moving forward according to a set budget and timeline objectives.
In phase three, Insight Professional Services leveraged our collaborative, agile approach to development to build applications and share expertise with the client’s teams. The result is that the client not only gets the exact solution needed but is also prepared at the end of the project to take ownership.
Achieving optimal Azure
Together, we were able to deliver the following outcomes to meet the client’s objectives:
- Immediate improvement in financial cloud spend reporting
- A roadmap for financial governance and reporting, including process and tooling improvements
- Better visibility into consumption across the organization
- Identification of inefficient workloads and idle resources
- Reduced cost for certain workloads through Reserved Instances purchases
- Identification of Azure- and Microsoft-native stack to manage ongoing cloud costs
Making the most of Microsoft with Insight
Microsoft’s host of advanced cloud solutions deliver nearly endless possibilities — as well as nearly endless spend if not properly optimized and controlled. With the help of Insight’s expert team, our clients enjoy the best Microsoft has to offer with utilization and cost controls that align the cloud environment to organizational goals.
Working together with the client’s finance and engineering teams, our team analyzed current expenditures in Azure, established appropriate cloud governance policies and helped the company achieve more than $450,000 in trackable savings.
Insight has helped the client not only optimize cloud utilization and spend, but also make informed choices for additional Microsoft products for a stronger cloud environment.
