FinOps for the multi-cloud

Liquid Reply optimises IT costs with the cloud in a container-based architecture

DYNAMICS DEMAND TRANSPARENCY

Gartner analysts predict that by 2022, more than 75 percent of global companies will be using containerised applications in production. The reason for this sharp increase is above all the possibility of effectively reducing IT costs.

For the effective use of a containerised platform in a highly dynamic environment transparency and governance are crucial. This way sound strategic decisions can be taken, costs be allocated and accountability be made visible - regardless of whether the containers are operated in a data centre or in the public cloud.

A multi-provider strategy with non-transparent costs

A company within the telecommunications industry operated with a complex organisational structure in the IT department. This caused many different cost centres. The use of several public cloud providers and different accounts per platform increased this effect.

There was no strategy for resource tagging, which not only resulted in costs not being allocated, but also created confusion about which department was responsible for which resources.

For the client, Liquid Reply analysed the entire infrastructure, created a new tagging strategy and implemented the cost management platform Cloudhealth in order to gain the necessary transparency.

Tagging and cost management

As a first step, Liquid Reply developed and implemented a tagging strategy for all cloud providers to enable a clear allocation of responsibilities and costs.


The team also implemented the cost management tool Cloudhealth. The tool is able to display all costs and provides reports in various formats to create transparency in cost structures.

With this newly gained transparency, Liquid Reply's Solution Architects analysed the data to determine the resource requirements for the container structure's nodes and pods. Once the team had observed the optimised infrastructure in the next phase for additional insights, further cost engineering was carried out. In the course of this, Liquid Reply reserved the necessary server and database resources to finally reduce the costs.

28 percent lower costs of the Multi-Cloud

With the new tagging strategy and by means of cloudhealth, Liquid Reply ensured the necessary visibility and allocation of the right cost centres. With the 3 R's (Rightsize, Remove, Reserve) strategy, the team reduced the costs of the client's multi-cloud environment by 28 percent.