Biotech company save 15% on monthly cloud spend.

About.

A global biotechnology company was leveraging the benefits of AWS to enable innovative and bespoke customer solutions. AWS allowed the company to utilise flexible sequencing and computing capacity, whilst delivering ongoing improvements in analytics tools and applications.

As the company continued to experience strong growth powered by its digital services, its cloud spend also grew. The business needed to get to grips with its AWS spend, and sought a tool to consolidate and manage its cloud usage.

Because of legacy issues in terms of spend, usage and processes, the company needed a tool that would not only provide clear high-level views across the cloud, but also more granular insights of specific usage and activities, with feedback, warnings and recommendations.

The Challenge.

At leadership level, increasing AWS costs were constantly high on the agenda. When forecasting, the business didn’t want to sustain the costs they were paying for AWS.

This wasn’t just a siloed technology project. It wasn’t a one-off IT fix. This was an enterprise-wide application and approach, embracing FinOps for the first time. A taskforce of key decision makers was therefore set up to oversee the management of cloud optimisation.

Also, the key stakeholders were quick to understand this wasn’t just a case of implementing a cloud management tool. FinOps is also a culture, an ongoing way of working, learning and implementing best practices. Therefore, they needed a partnership approach from their provider. Onboarding, training and ongoing support were important factors in their selection process.

Enter Nordcloud and IBM Multicloud Accelerator.

The Solution.

IBM Multicloud Accelerator automates cloud cost management, making FinOps (and continuous cloud cost savings) a reality.

The first lightbulb moment came when the taskforce first saw the dashboard in action – they could see this was the solution to their needs. During the demo, the dashboard clearly showed in real time where costs were, where they could be saved and what forecasted spend would be – all in one place.

And usability was key. Anyone could go into the tool, click an item and access all the information they needed. Also, the automatic categorisation of resources for business units and activities was important, saving time compared with manual tagging and delivering speedy insights. The team could then demonstrate usage by department, and distribute costs accordingly.

But, crucially, it’s more than a tool. To maximise the value of the tool, Nordcloud’s onboarding process was customised for the company’s team and structure. This meant a very fast and smooth integration. The automated tagging, and any fixes were extremely quick, and the partnered approach from the beginning saw the support team provide regular advice and suggestions, about how to use IBM Multicloud Accelerator in different ways.

The Results.

The primary business goal to reduce AWS costs was a success, as Nordcloud plus IBM Multicloud Accelerator helped achieve a reduction of 15% in monthly cloud spend.

The onboarding process was fast and smooth, with all 21 applications onboarded within two weeks. And, when the team now create new applications or structures, it can be used as a tool to prove the potential value.

But IBM Multicloud Accelerator isn’t just a cloud management tool. The company also benefits from the support and technology expertise to embed those FinOps best practices across the business. Through the training and onboarding, to support and continued knowledge-sharing, the company was able to smoothly transition to this optimised way of working and leveraging AWS.