Key Facts 

• Undergoing a significant transformation program, V2 has ensured that the organisation has the necessary cost savings and FinOps capability to succeed 

• Despite significantly increasing its footprint, the organisation is on track for 20% in annualised cloud cost savings, with best practices embedded and maintained through established ‘Well Aligned’ and ‘Well Architected Methods’.

• The organisation, an Australian Energy provider, also achieved a measurable reduction in its carbon footprint, aligning with its sustainability objectives.

•  By embedding cost-awareness practices, FinOps principles and data driven analytics and reporting, the organisation is driving long-term financial and environmental benefits.

The Client: Transforming the Business 

The organisation is a leading energy provider in Australia and is undergoing a period of transformation. 

The Challenge: Cost Optimisation and Changing Mindsets

The organisation recently undertook a significant transformation program, migrating newly acquired businesses to the organisation’s tech stack on Microsoft Azure. As a result, the organisation was facing significant inefficiencies, primarily due to a lack of visibility into the various departments’ spend, which ultimately led to unnecessary waste.

The business's strategic approach to cloud was rooted in an on-premises mindset, which resulted in suboptimal resource utilisation and a tendency to build for peak production scale rather than embracing the mantra of cloud - accessing resources in a pay-as-you-go model. 

With optimisation opportunities being overlooked and instead a focus on speed to market, the organisation’s IT leadership identified opportunities for cloud cost optimisation as well as a need for the team to be upskilled in order to fully leverage the capabilities of cloud. 

The organisation selected V2 based on our comprehensive approach, which went beyond standard cloud recommendations and instead deeply analysed cloud utilisation, respectfully challenging the status quo and a holistic approach that included upskilling internal capabilities. 

The Solution: Large, sustained cost savings and productivity gains for the business

To better understand the landscape, V2 developed proprietary code to conduct a deeper and more comprehensive analysis than standard tooling, identifying inefficiencies invisible to standard assessments.

When anomalies were detected, our deep technical expertise and experience at large enterprises enabled us to dig deeper and pinpoint optimisation opportunities. Leveraging AI-powered productivity tools such as GitHub Copilot, we built capabilities and validated hypotheses faster, expediting the cost-saving process.

By acting as a bridge between technical and business teams, V2 provided transparency into cloud expenditure, allowing for better decision-making. Our approach also included a strong emphasis on reducing carbon emissions by optimising cloud consumption, directly correlating cloud spend reductions with sustainability benefits.

V2’s deep Azure expertise allowed us to deliver meaningful cost optimisations, and our efficiency-first mindset ensured a long-term focus on operational excellence, rather than just short-term cost savings. Just as importantly, was helping the organisation realise the need to evolve beyond a discipline into a mindset, strategy, culture and means to financial excellence, bringing cloud cost visibility as close as possible to the engineering teams, so that they could understand how their decisions impact cloud costs, taking appropriate measures at the design point.

Over the course of the engagement, V2 successfully positioned FinOps as a strategy to drive down expenses, streamline operations and ensure that investments deliver maximum value, making a compelling case and, in turn, receiving executive buy-in.

Delivering Value: Achieved Significant Cost Reductions and Increased Visibility

As the brands within the organisation were brought together to establish a nationwide network, V2 has helped transform the organisation’s approach to cloud consumption, incorporating FinOps principles, delivering immediate cost savings and instilling a long-term efficiency mindset in the team.

These business outcomes included: 

• Significant cost reductions: Despite onboarding more businesses, total cloud costs remained static due to proactive savings.  Within six months, the company realised a 20% reduction in annual Azure spend.. The cost savings were achieved seamlessly, with no adverse impact on business operations or end-user experience, as the solutions were fit for purpose and followed a well-architected approach.

• Increased visibility in cloud expenditure: V2 FinOps, analytics and reporting efforts also increased financial visibility and optimisation opportunities, giving the organisation a clearer understanding of its expenditure and enabling better resource allocation.

• Aligned to strategic sustainability objectives: By optimising cloud consumption, the organisation also achieved a measurable reduction in its carbon footprint, aligning to its sustainability objectives.

• Upskilled teams: The organisation's IT development teams cloud operations teams underwent targeted upskilling programs,  empowering staff to proactively identify inefficiencies, implement best practices, and manage cloud resources with greater autonomy.

V2 is continuing to support the large Australian Energy provider by embedding a cultural shift towards ongoing cost optimisation aligned to a well-aligned and well-architected approach.