FactSet gains actionable insights and improves both FinOps and cloud operations with IBM Cloudability
Engineering teams are core to FactSet, a leading financial data, market analysis and insights firm. These teams create solutions, test ideas and drive innovation. Furthermore, their access to cloud resources greatly increased agility, and a micro-account strategy enabled engineers to quickly create accounts in a secured way. Eventually, FactSet’s cloud environment grew to approximately 3,000 accounts, most in Amazon Web Services (AWS), making cost management critical and challenging. While idle resources hid costs through capitalized purchases in the data center, unused resources in the cloud, burned cash that directly impacted the bottom line.
FactSet built a custom tool to collect spend data and produce reports, but it lacked actionable transparency for engineers and required ongoing maintenance. To overcome these limitations and empower teams, FactSet sought a more scalable, feature-rich solution for cloud cost management.
FactSet’s search for a replacement led to IBM® Cloudability® cloud cost management platform, chosen for its scalability to handle large volumes of billing data, intuitive user interface (UI) and user experience (UX), robust self-service capabilities and seamless integration with the IBM Apptio® ecosystem. Implementation was fast and straightforward. “When we first saw IBM Cloudability, we liked it. It checked the majority of the boxes for us,” said Hitesh Chitalia. “The ease of integrating the cloud billing system made it very easy for us to just get started and going on it.”
IBM Cloudability immediately enabled FactSet to import billing data from thousands of accounts and maintain mappings to divisions and engineering teams. This process gave engineers actionable insights into their actual spend and improved collaboration between FinOps and finance. With transparency established, FactSet could identify cost drivers, empower teams to optimize resources and lay the foundation for advanced FinOps practices.
IBM Cloudability transformed how FactSet manages cloud costs by providing deep visibility and actionable insights. Engineers now see actual spend and trends, enabling them to drill down into shared cost drivers, identify anomalies and take steps to reduce waste. Cloudability also strengthened collaboration across finance, FinOps and engineering leadership, fostering trust in reporting and enabling monthly cloud review meetings. According to Chitalia, “Engineering leadership loves the transparency we are giving them, and they want more of it because they trust the data and see opportunities to take action.”
This shift helped FactSet increase reserved instance coverage for RDS from 40% to 90%, maximizing discounts and improving cost efficiency. Cloudability provides recommendations for rightsizing services, computing discounts and automation to remove unused resources, driving further optimization. Most importantly, engineers now have the data they need to make informed decisions. With this foundation, FactSet is preparing for its next step: unit economics, enabling product-level cost allocation and strategic decision-making.
FactSet is a financial data and software company headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut. Founded in 1978, the company specializes in solutions for investment professionals, providing them with access to financial data and analytics that help them make business-critical decisions. With 37 locations in 20 countries, FactSet employs over 12,000 people, serves 8,200 client institutions and more than 218,000 investment professionals.
Legal
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2025
IBM, the IBM logo, Apptio, Cloudability, and IBM Apptio are trademarks of IBM Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide.
Examples presented as illustrative only. Actual results will vary based on client configurations and conditions and, therefore, generally expected results cannot be provided.