Aligning cloud spend to business value using FinOps

How can a company ensure its cloud spend is under control and aligned to business value?

Samsung SDS America (SDSA) is taking on this challenge and succeeding.

Samsung SDSA, a regional branch of global IT services leader Samsung SDS, offers digital transformation, cloud transformation and enterprise mobility services to Samsung Group companies and external clients in North America.

As the company’s public cloud deployments on AWS increased, cost management became a challenge. Samsung SDSA used a third-party solution to identify potential areas for cost savings. However, generating showback and chargeback reports for accounts receivable still required time-consuming manual effort. The cloud team was often left with only a few days before the end of the billing cycle to make changes.

Samsung SDSA knew there was greater savings potential. In 2023, the company sought deeper visibility into its cloud spend to identify more efficient ways to minimize cloud waste and optimize the environment.

Samsung SDSA engaged IBM for a proof of value (POV) and subsequently purchased IBM® Cloudability® from AWS Marketplace. Upon applying the solution to a portion of its AWS environment, the company gained a whole new level of visibility. On the Cloudability dashboard, Samsung SDSA received a holistic view of cost and usage for the targeted AWS accounts, including detailed insights into cloud spend, trends and anomalies.

The company now uses the solution to identify idle, cost-incurring resources and over-provisioned Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances while receiving recommendations to optimize costs. Cloudability helps Samsung SDSA allocate cloud costs to the responsible business units or user groups, fostering accountability and establishing a FinOps culture.

Teams use Cloudability to create usage forecasts and make commitments based on their budgets. Samsung SDSA, in turn, uses the Cloudability Savings Automation tool to efficiently capture commitment-based discounts, such as savings plans (SPs) and convertible reserved instances (CRIs). Typically, matching computing needs with available discounts demands time-consuming manual analysis. The Cloudability Savings Automation tool expedites this process, continuously scanning the AWS environment and automatically purchasing appropriate SPs and CRIs.

In the first half of 2024, Samsung SDSA used Cloudability to help one of the largest Samsung Group companies reduce spend across 86 AWS accounts by 11%.

At the same time, Samsung SDSA conducted a POV of IBM® Turbonomic® on 20 AWS accounts, applying the solution's AI capability to automatically generate recommendations for resizing and optimizing computing resources. Now, Samsung SDSA uses Turbonomic to automate nondisruptive rightsizing actions, reducing manual effort and saving USD 400,000 in the second half of the year. (Turbonomic is now available as part of Cloudability Premium.)

Moving forward, Samsung SDSA is targeting even more savings and optimization by extending the use of Cloudability to other Samsung Group AWS accounts.

Samsung SDS America is a regional branch of Korea-based Samsung SDS. The company is headquartered in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, and operates 10 sites in North America. It provides IT solutions and consulting services to Samsung Group companies and external clients across the continent.