Process

Efficient Cloud uses a combination of artificial intelligence and human expertise to help clients reduce cloud waste. Built around the industry-leading FinOps Framework, our process follows a cycle of Inform → Optimize → Operate, helping our clients grow their capabilities and attain greater cloud cost maturity.

Phases

The FinOps lifecycle consists of three phases that are continuously repeated.

Inform

Gain the visibility you need for cloud spend allocation. This helps create shared accountability within your business by showing teams what they are spending and why.

Optimize

Empower your teams by providing actionable recommendations.

Operate

Build governance policies that provide continuity and structure. This enables the goals of Technology, Finance and Business to be jointly achieved.

1Inform Phase

In the inform phase, we work with clients to gain a comprehensive understanding of cloud spend, and to equip everyone - from individual development teams to the CEO - with real-time, comprehensive, and accurate data dashboards that are essential for intelligent decision making.

During this phase, we will work with you to:

  • Consolidate spend and consumption data from across multiple clouds or cloud accounts.
  • Determine and enforce tagging strategies.
  • Implement show-back or charge-back reports, so each team or business unit is fully aware of their costs.
  • Allocate shared spend and past commitments to ensure costs are “fully loaded”.
  • Develop meaningful metrics that align with business goals.
  • Measure benchmarks within teams, and against similar organisations.
  • Build real-time alerts to avoid run-away spend.

2Optimise Phase

In the optimise phase, we take the insights garnered in the inform phase, and begin reducing spend.

In this phase, we will work with you to:

  • Eliminate unused resources.
  • Rightsize over-provisioned resources.
  • Replace expensive managed services with competitive alternatives.
  • Buy and sell reserved or committed-use discounts with confidence, maximising coverage while minimising risk and unused commitments.
  • Turning off non-production resources when not in use.
  • Refactor services towards more efficient cloud-native alternatives.

3Operate Phase

In the operate phase, we seek to lock-in the efficiencies gained by driving cultural change.

In this phase, we will work with you to:

  • Develop an in-house “Cloud Center of Excellence” including business, financial, and tech stakeholders to drive long-term efficiencies.
  • Equip and train staff with the tools needed for long-term success.
  • Measure performance against key business objectives.
  • Determine and implement key governance policies and models.

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Capabilities

As we cycle through the FinOps Phases, we measure and build client capabilities in the following areas.

Understanding Cloud Usage and Cost

  • Cost Allocation (Metadata & Hierarchy)
  • Data Analysis and Showback
  • Managing Shared Cost
  • Data Ingestion & Normalization
  • Managing Anomalies
  • Forecasting
  • Measuring Unit Costs

Performance Tracking & Benchmarking

  • Measuring Unit Costs
  • Managing Commitment Based Discounts
  • Resource Utilization & Efficiency
  • Forecasting
  • Budget Management
  • Managing Anomalies

Organizational Alignment

  • Establishing FinOps Culture
  • Managing Shared Cost
  • Chargeback & IT Finance Integration
  • Data Analysis and Showback
  • Budget Management
  • FinOps Education & Enablement
  • Establishing a FinOps Decision & Accountability Structure
  • Cloud Policy & Governance
  • IT Asset Management Integration

Real-Time Decision Making

  • Managing Anomalies
  • Establishing a FinOps Decision & Accountability Structure
  • Measuring Unit Costs
  • Data Analysis and Showback

Cloud Rate Optimization

  • Data Analysis and Showback
  • Managing Commitment Based Discounts

Cloud Usage Optimization

  • Data Analysis and Showback
  • Onboarding Workloads
  • Resource Utilization & Efficiency
  • Workload Management & Automation

Maturity

As clients cycle through phases and build capabilities, we aim to see a gradual growth in maturity across the organization. This happens gradually, and may happen faster in some teams than others.

Crawl

Organisations at the Crawl stage are just beginning their FinOps journey.

Organisations at this stage are characterised by:

  • Little reporting or tooling
  • Basic KPIs
  • Plans to address “low hanging fruit”
  • A low level of organisational buy-in or understanding of the FinOps process.

Walk

Organisations at the Walk stage are making solid progress on their FinOps journey.

Organisations at this stage are characterised by:

  • Broad understanding or buy-in across the organisation.
  • Automation and/or processes cover most requirements.
  • Difficult edge cases are identified, and intentionally deferred or rejected.
  • Advanced KPIs set that align with organization goals.

Run

Organisations at the Run stage are excelling in their FinOps journey.

Organisations at this stage are characterised by:

  • An established Cloud Center of Excellence moving at a consistent pace.
  • Efforts to address difficult edge cases.
  • Comprehensive adoption of automation.
  • Deep alignment of KPIs with organization goals.

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Whatever cloud financial challenges you face, Efficient Cloud is here to help. Our certified specialists will work with you to identify and tackle waste in a sustainable cadence that leads to long-term efficiency within your team.

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