20230601_FinOps_Meetup_Switzerland.pdf

1. Cédric Weider
Cloud Solutions | Product Lead Public Cloud
Version 1.0 – 01.06.2023
From Public Cloud
Cost Savings to
Sustainability
A story about our FinOps maturity evolution on the journey
to the (multi-)cloud

2. About me
cedric.weider@helvetia.ch
linkedin.com/in/cedric-weider
Product Lead Public Cloud
Senior Solutions Architect
FinOps Practitioner
Cloud Architecture with focus on AWS
Leading public cloud financial
topics (FinOps) since 2019
Primary contact for SaaS
projects
Coordination of Public Cloud / Multi-Cloud topics
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IT infrastructure background
20+ years System Engineering
5 years Cloud Experience

3. About Helvetia
Helvetia is a Swiss all-lines insurer with business in four European countries and
in selected niche markets worldwide (Specialty Markets).
Channels
Products
Divisions &
Regions
Brands
Mergers &
Acquisitions 2013 2014 2016 2019 2020
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Switzerland Europe Specialty Markets
Liability
Property Car Art
Plane
Construction Container
Transport
Life Group Life
Accident &
Health
Ship Travel
Own sales force Agents Broker
Partners Online
> 12'000 employees
> 7 Mio. customers
Business volume 2021
CHF 11'222 Mio.
Group profit (after tax) 2021
CHF 520 Mio.
0.54 Mio. trees for the climate
Facts & Figures
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4. Cloud Journey vs. FinOps Maturity
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2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
1st AWS
Account
1st Productive
Workloads
in the Cloud
Cloud
Strategy
Cloud
Competence
Center
A few accounts only,
1 invoice - 1 payer
« Life's easy ;-) »
1:n App <> Accounts
« We don't need any tags
& Excel is my best friend »
Projects & PoC's
"bubbling"
Start regular Cost
Optimization Calls
Start Cost Optimization
Advisory for Projects

5. Cost optimization example: App with 3 stages on AWS
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Optimization examples:
• Resizing of EC2 instances
• Resizing of RDS instances
• Scale down Prod EC2 nodes
during the night & weekends
• DEV & INT resized
• Run DEV only on-demand
• Saving plans & Reserved Instances
• Enterprise Discount Program
• Change from gp2 to gp3 EBS
volumes for EC2 instances
• Activate Infrequent Access on EFS
- 78%

6. Cloud Journey vs. FinOps Maturity
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2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
1st AWS
Account
1st Azure
Subscription
1st Productive
Workloads
in the Cloud
Cloud
Strategy
Cloud
Competence
Center
SAP Migration
to Azure
A few accounts only,
1 invoice - 1 payer
« Life's easy ;-) »
1:n App <> Accounts
« We don't need any tags
& Excel is my best friend »
Projects & PoC's
"bubbling"
« Oh wait… that's a lot to handle.
We need automation ! »

7. 7
1 2 3
"Get Experience":
Initial State
“Stability”: Control /
Enforce / Govern
“Agility”: Create /
Enable / Support
FinOps & Budget Control
Monitoring & Observability
Security & Compliance
Ops Automation
Provisioning / IaC
Service Intelligence
A True Multi-Cloud – is more than just multiple Clouds
Connectivity & Integration
Organization structure
First productive Workloads
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8. Cloud Journey vs. FinOps Maturity
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2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
1st AWS
Account
1st Azure
Subscription
1st Productive
Workloads
in the Cloud
Cloud
Strategy
Cloud
Competence
Center
SAP Migration
to Azure
A few accounts only,
1 invoice - 1 payer
« Life's easy ;-) »
1:n App <> Accounts
« We don't need any tags
& Excel is my best friend »
Projects & PoC's
"bubbling"
Multi-Cloud:
Multi-tools,
Multi-format,
Multi-Excel
« We need more automation…
Let's evaluate tools ! »
1st X-Mas
Challenge

9. Gamification & Positive Challenging
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Who said FinOps is a boring topic?
Teams can have some fun & motivation while
reducing cloud costs and consumptions.
Example: X-Mas Cloud Cost Reduction Challenge
Teams competed against each other with the goal
of reducing the most costs over the Christmas
period.
The winning team reduced their spend by over
40% and earned a breakfast event for the whole
team
More ideas: https://www.finops.org/wg/a-guide-to-gamification-for-finops/

10. Cloud Journey vs. FinOps Maturity
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2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
1st AWS
Account
1st Azure
Subscription
1st Productive
Workloads
in the Cloud
Cloud
Strategy
Cloud
Competence
Center
SAP Migration
to Azure
A few accounts only,
1 invoice - 1 payer
« Life's easy ;-) »
1:n App <> Accounts
« We don't need any tags
& Excel is my best friend »
Projects & PoC's
"bubbling"
« We need a tool ! » FinOps tool
rollout, training…
« Let's collaborate ! »
Start of service oriented
IT cost chargeback
« We need even more automation
to deliver cost data to IT finance! »

11. Cloud Journey vs. FinOps Maturity
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2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
1st AWS
Account
1st Azure
Subscription
1st Productive
Workloads
in the Cloud
Massive Lift & Shift
Migration in the Cloud
Cloud
Strategy
Cloud
Competence
Center
SAP Migration
to Azure
A few accounts only,
1 invoice - 1 payer
« Life's easy ;-) »
1:n App <> Accounts
« We don't need any tags
& Excel is my best friend »
Projects & PoC's
"bubbling"
« We need a tool ! » FinOps tool
Service oriented
IT cost chargeback
n:n App <> Accounts
+ Shared Service Accounts
« We finally need TAGS !! »
Shutdown our
Data Centers

12. A Big Impact on our Carbon Footprint
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70%
saved carbon
emissions*
83%
73%
62%
37% 35%
20%
0%
14%
15%
15%
23%
12%
12%
19%
2%
12%
23%
41%
53%
68%
81%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Q1/2018 Q1/2019 Q1/2020 Q1/2021 Q1/2022 Q1/2023 Q1/2024
Data center External hosting Cloud
*based on migrations until end of 2021

13. What's Next? Make FinOps to our Cloud Job 0.5!
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« Security is Job 0, FinOps is Job 0.5 »
̶ Marit Hughes, Deloitte
• Get more out of the tool(s)
• Operationalize optimization recommendations
(rightsizing, autoscaling, decomm. waste…)
• Increase awareness, Train people
• Closer collaboration with IT Finance and DevOps teams
• Build up an internal FinOps community of practice
• Adopt the Cloud Unit Economics approach
• Gamification / Incentives: Make it more fun!
• Last but not least… get more sustainable

14. « We only have one production environment! »
David Sterz, Mindcurv GmgH
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15. Thank you for
your attention.
Cédric Weider
Product Lead Public Cloud
Senior Solutions Architect
cedric.weider@helvetia.ch