Delivering an optimised AWS implementation

project results

• Extended existing AWS credits
• Fully reviewed & optimised estate
• Integrated Finance into processes
• Mitigated potential for Bill Shock

the challenge

The client’s IT is built almost entirely on the AWS cloud, further supported by various SaaS providers to meet their wider business requirements. The client has a technically astute SRE DevOps organisation and has a team of top class engineers delivering a programme of continuous improvement, delivering new features and capabilities for two key products for its customers. Their front end is as delivered via a SaaS solutions, while their back end AWS platform uses containers, microservices, and platform as a service databases.

why we were chosen

We were engaged to specifically review their FinOps maturity and help optimise the client’s AWS environment, as their existing AWS credits were coming to an end. These credits essentially meant that everything they had built on AWS platform to that point had been free and optimisation hadn’t been a priority for their team.

However, with those credits now coming to an end, they needed to start optimising their AWS estate and associated costs, ensuring that these costs fitted their on-going business model. We were chosen because of our AWS experience and our FinOps expertise and accreditations.

how we engaged

Synyega’s team of certified FinOps experts initially delivered a full FinOps Maturity Assessment that reviewed the client operation across the four domains specified in the FinOps Foundation framework and across all 22 capabilities. Our team worked with the Head of Engineering and the Chief Product Officer, and helped them define objectives including where they would like to be and what they wished to achieve by the time the credits ended via target maturity scores.

Our analysis included a review of each capability against five lenses - which are knowledge, process, metrics, adoption, and automation.  Generally we find that organizations score more highly in areas like knowledge and process etc and less so on automation. However, in this one case, the client is heavily automated in everything they do.

working with the client

During the initial phases of the service our team engaged in the knowledge gathering process with the Head of Engineering, Data teams and Finance teams, reviewing each capability through a detailed questionnaire to understand where they actually were at that point in time. From this, our team built a clear roadmap of the steps they need to take, and what they need to put in place to make sure to avoid bill shock, which as a start up is of great concern, as it could be hugely disruptive to their business.

Our FinOps experts also provided clear guidance on how to optimise the current estate to make sure the available credits lasted as long as possible, and more importantly how the client’s team should build optimisation into their standard processes, especially into their engineering working practices.

Working with the Finance team we identified potential issues and gaps in their technical estimations moving into their budgeting, caused by the credits and a lack of actual cost data on which they could base accurate forecasts for future spend. Our team worked with both Finance and Engineering implementing a collaborative process that ensures they work together on updating their forecast based on new cloud workloads.

client benefits

The impact of our FinOps service has been felt across their organisation. Our team ensured the client extended use of their available credits to the end of the term, more importantly, that when the client needed to start paying for the AWS usage they were only going to be paying for an optimal infrastructure.

Finance and other key stakeholders are now an integral part of the process, so that as things change, forecasts are being updated and then can then be checked and reviewed against the chargeback numbers that finance are already managing well.

Our service also delivered key processes that allow for optimisation to be happening on an ongoing basis, so they won’t be left with an optimised workload long term. Our Maturity Assessment formed the basis of a robust FinOps strategy with a clear roadmap to achieve their goals. Visibility of their maturity score with milestones and KPIs will allow them to implement a culture of continuous improvement.