At a glance
Industry
Banking
Challenge
To rein in its cloud spending, a US regional bank implemented FinOps, saving $3 million annually and redeploying the funds for strategic IT initiatives
Success Highlights
- Secured an initial savings of $3 million for IT reinvestment
- Expanded cost savings opportunities by 50%, amounting to $6 million
- Trained IT staff in FinOps concepts, practices and processes
Our approach
The FinOps engagement extended Cognizant’s five-year relationship with the bank on managed services that range from application development and platform support to automation and quality engineering. Our strong ties with the organization extended to the CIO and senior management.
We kicked off the FinOps program with an eight-week assessment. The bank’s monthly Azure spend topped $1.6 million, with more than 35,000 + line items across multiple Azure resources. IT needed controls in place to understand what each line item was, who owned it and where the cost should be allocated.
Business outcomes
For IT leaders, visibility into the bank’s Azure use was eye-opening. The bank quickly set a goal of making cloud cost optimization part of its DNA, and in addition to instituting Azure sprint cycles, it participated in a FinOps Maturity analysis. In response to the findings, it piloted a FinOps 101 training for IT staff that emphasizes cost transparency. Key training principles included helping teams better understand the financial impacts of technology decisions and how engineering and development practices impact cloud spend.
- Realized cumulative savings of $4 million, enabling IT leadership to reinvest
- Increased cost savings opportunities by 50%, totaling $6 million