Case Study

Big 4 Bank: FinOps Capability Uplift

Uplifting the bank’s Cloud FinOps capability to realise the true value of cloud.

At a Glance

DigiRen uplifted the Cloud FinOps capability of a Big 4 Bank to address rising cloud costs and changing perceptions around cloud value. By embedding a FinOps uplift pod, driving cost optimisation campaigns, and delivering a cloud tagging compliance program, DigiRen enabled the bank to achieve 22% annual cloud savings in FY23, 95% tagging compliance, and fostered a collaborative cost-conscious culture across 12 Technology Domains.

22%
Per annum cloud cost savings realised in FY23
95%
Tagging Compliance achieved
30
Tagging Compliance achieved

Challenge

Our client is one of the “big 4” banks in Australia, providing banking and financial products and services to over 8.5 million retail and business customers across more than 30 markets in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Pacific, Europe, America and the Middle East.

As part of the bank’s ‘Simplification’ program launched in 2018/2019, the bank commenced a mass migration of applications to public cloud - AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. That journey has involved migrating existing applications to the cloud and building new applications in the cloud.

With the migration effort focused on velocity, cloud bills were increasing at a higher rate than expected, creating a growing perception across the bank that the cloud was too expensive. The Bank sought DigiRen’s services to identify cloud operations uplift opportunities to support the current and future scale of their cloud adoption. DigiRen’s approach was to conduct a Cloud Operating Model Assessment, that identified Cloud FinOps capability as a key opportunity area.

The Challenge for DigiRen

To help the bank manage cloud spend and the perception towards to the benefits of cloud by uplifting the bank’s Cloud FinOps capability.

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Approach

With the deployment of a 3-team pod of highly experienced Cloud Operating Model SME’s, DigiRen uplifted the bank's Cloud FinOps capabilities by:

  1. Conducting a detailed cloud cost savings opportunity assessment that set an FY23 savings target of 10%.
  2. Establishing a virtual ‘Cloud Ops Ambassador’ team responsible for actioning cloud cost optimisation opportunities within each Tech Domain, and chairing fortnightly Cloud Ops Ambassador connects to enable the sharing of ideas/knowledge on ways to optimise cloud costs.
  3. Centrally driving cost optimisation campaigns targeting key optimisation levers such as waste elimination, rightsizing, power scheduling and term commitments (AWS Savings Plans/RIs, GCP CUDs).
  4. Delivering a cloud tagging uplift project to 1) assess & revise/simplify the bank’s cloud tagging schema/standards, 2) drive a once-off compliance uplift effort against the updated schema, and 3) establish ongoing cloud tagging governance & controls required to sustain compliance levels.

Outcomes

Supported by strong executive sponsorship, DigiRen helped the Bank to deliver:

  • 22% in per annum cloud cost savings achieved in year 1.
  • Through the Cloud Ops Ambassadors fostered a much greater understanding and adoption of cloud cost optimisation levers within 12 Technology Domains and a culture of collaboration & knowledge sharing on cloud cost management between them.
  • Greater accuracy of cloud chargeback and greater cost accountability within the Technology Domains with 95% average compliance against mandatory tags for AWS accounts (an 6.5x improvement vs the baseline average compliance rate of 14%)
22%
Per annum cloud cost savings realised in FY23
95%
Tagging Compliance achieved
30
Tagging Compliance achieved
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