OK, let's begin. Well, thank you. Uh so much for joining me in the session. Uh The session is about tips to simplify cloud spend management. My name is Sylvia Gedge.I am the president of Scrubs String and uh today, really, I'm going to share a perspective sort of from uh from my kind of point of the view. Um I'm not necessarily a technical person, my background is business finance and digital transformation. Um I love sort of, you know, helping people and, and influence positive change and really getting things done. Uh That's, you know, a little bit of my, a personality, I love innovation. I love sort of questioning uh how we can do things better and, and challenging the status quo and really sort of, you know, even as, as a leader of the team, this is what we do on daily basis. It's, you know, if, if something isn't working, that's OK. Let's break it, let's figure out how can we do it better. Um So, from my experience that of throughout my career and, and working with digital transformation, including cloud optimization, really, any digital transformation requires team. It's not, it's not just one team, I team, it's, it's really set of teams, cross functional teams working together um using set of those as as goals for the companies to move forward, including cloud optimization. Uh Why, why are we talking today about cloud spend? Right?

Why is this a topic of the discussion? What's a big business in 2021? The spending on cloud services is projected to 305 billion according to Gartner um as a prior CFO and working with Cio S, everybody at the sea level, they continue to struggle with managing clouds spin and with COVID, um you know, knowing sort of, you know, the impact that it had sort of on, on, on society and workplace and everybody that sort of, you know, struggle was even much more predominant and, and even the sort of the projected uh spend on cloud services, this is before all things happen.

So, uh you know, the real number is going to be probably much higher. So consistent performance and cost control is an ongoing struggle for any sea level and even sort of the directors, anybody sort of touching clouds and trying to figure out it's, um it's a bit of a challenge. I know that sort of, you know, as a first hand, I was um in my prior role, I worked for a company who migrated to the cloud and, and went through this whole cloud spend sort of, you know, first hand uh worked really closely with uh with the IT manager and the IT director. And it was, you know, it was, it was a big challenge. It was a big challenge even for a mid size organization because the Bills were 50 pages long. It was really difficult to understand. Um it was a manual process. We didn't have any tools, we didn't have uh really kind of understanding, you know why the charges were going up. You know, we, we budgeted sort of X amount of dollars and it was five times what we budgeted. And that's not uh at the time, it was Azure sort of that was the uh cloud vendor provider, had no idea what was going on and it became sort of to that point that it was like that bill would come in at month end and nobody wanted to deal with it.

But we knew when you had customers, those costs had to be allocated, there was chargebacks to departments to projects. So we really needed to figure out a way how we can work well together. So you have the time constraints, all that manual processing, you have the budget pressure, especially with, with COVID and you know, everybody moving to more uh more remote workplaces, all those costs sort of, you know, uh were escalating and then you have missing information and you really don't understand, you know, ok, my performance, you know, we, we had a set of problems but my costs are increasing, like why is that happening?

Uh and then the accountability, you know, is it, is it a financial sort of uh management responsible for, for managing the cloud budget or is it really sort of the it or engineer, you know, where is that responsibility? So those are just some common challenges um that speaking with clients and, and working sort of, you know, with cloud spend sort of personally what we sort of uncovered. Um So today I'm gonna talk about three ways how you can focus and really look at cloud spend with purpose to increase and be efficient for your organization. So what can you do? Um Well, 1st, 1st thing is every organization is going to be uh the different maturity level of where they are with their cloud adaptation. So some companies, maybe they just migrated to the cloud, they're figuring things out, you know, some are going to be, you know, what we have a pretty good handle on what we're doing. But yes, it's still, it's a lot of data and there is sort of some challenges really managing in a timely fashion and, and then you have sort of, you know, ones which, you know, what budget is not an issue, we still need to manage our clouds, but it's really about being sort of efficient, regardless whether you fall into that.

We're just migrating to the or we have migrated to the cloud. And now we need to sort of figure this out, outsourcing is a really good option to give you an idea and, and, and build a framework for your organization, how to manage that cloud. It's going to, um, you know, if you're, if you're small or big, it's going to free up your team from, you know, figuring out specifically, you know, making sense out of the cloud with focusing on other things that they need to uh focus on. It's going to build that framework, you're going to be working. If you select the vendor, the vendor, they're, they're going to be subject matter experts that they have the skill. They, this is something that has been acquired over time. Um You know, for us, sort of, you know, we have developed set of engineers, they've been doing this forever. Uh So they really, really know they have a deep understanding how all the different pieces, how all these different lego blocks, you know, the services, the performance, how it ties into cost. If I do this, what does that mean? So you really want to sort of lean on, on a vendor for that framework, for the experience and really for the ability to deliver results quickly. How can I save 50% on my cloud spend?

Because, you know, we really have a big problem how to do it accurately, you know, what my mandate, you know, you're my vendor, you're going to deliver on that promise that you're going to save 50% you know, I'm gonna hold you accountable, right? And that way I can focus on other things, other digital transformation projects. And it gives me a peace of mind regarding set of to my cloud spend. So that's a tip number one, get a really set of solid vendor, do your research, um you know, interview sort of multiple ones and and find one that works with your organization and for the maturity of where you are within your cloud adaptation. The second one is whether you're outsourcing or whether you're doing this in house, regardless of the size, begin with the areas of cloud waste. And, and, and what this really means, you know, there's always the 8020 rule really regardless of, you know, what we do in life, but that's the same thing applies with cloud. So there is, you know, tools that can help you sort of uh you know, manage and figure out uh the analysis. What is that cloud waste?

But you can do it sort of manually as well with, with probably sort of the vendors and the tools that you have at hand and it's looking at the data, it's looking at Cervino, what are, what is, what are some of the services that, that can turn off if I'm not using them? Um You know, is it, did we spin up uh a free trial for a client? You know, our, our client is in the cloud, we spin up a free trial of, of a service. Um, it was for 30 days and you know, what, guess what, they're not using it and maybe they even a bended it after seven days, but it's still out there running. Maybe it's a dev environment. Maybe it's a Q A sort of testing. Maybe, you know, it could be so many different things but you need to create side of the process with efficiency within your organization, within your business that you can manage those cloud ways that, you know, you have that finger on the pulse. Oh yes, these things sort of, you know, are not going to have that continued cycle. They, they don't need to be always in production. So when they're not turn it off and that's going to generate huge, huge, huge savings and somebody needs to be really monitoring that you can do that with obviously automation with, with sort of, you know, uh putting sort of, you know, dev ops and, and using sort of that discipline, there is many different ways to do it, but that would be sort of, you know, critical area of focus and with a lot of businesses, you know, tying in really sort of the user uh user, how, how are the users using sort of the cloud technologies, the cloud environments if it's a 9 to 5 type of a business and whether it's your customers or users, nobody is really sort of utilizing the services after five, turn it off, right, turn it off, turn it off on the weekend and that's going to give you big, big savings.

Uh And, and very often sort of, you know, companies, you know, find that this is, you know, a big chunk where they can save very easily without having an impact on their business. And the last set of, but not least um set of a tip again, sitting sort of, you know, from that business perspective is really closing the gap between finance and it uh cloud optimization is, is really sort of a function of a business. It's not very often it's seen, oh, you know what it, it's, it's the cloud, it's, it, they should really sort of, you know, manage that they're responsible for that. But what I, what we found sort of, you know, speaking with our clients and um and, and really sort of the, the people that have to be at the table is, is both finance and it, and when you are sort of working through the framework and, and, and the benefits, it's really about kind of collaborating and having a consistent message uh between set of those leader finding that alignment that really maximizes the savings for the company.

And what I mean by that is, you know, very often when uh you know, we, we go through goal planning as an organization, you know, it is gonna have, you know, their set of goals, their goal and instead of, you know, execute on that um and cloud set of optimization probably it might be one of those goals and, and if it isn't, and this is what as a company as a whole, you're trying to do well, it should be.

And then for finance, because really there is that alignment that, you know, you need to collaborate, finance should always uh as well. Sort of as I see if it's a common business goal, have cloud optimization as a goal as well. So it creates sort of that alignment, it creates the consistency and when you are rolling out company wide initiatives, it gets that buy in from the top level down. And then when, when finance leader is engaging with their department and rolling out sort of the mandate, this is what we're doing this year. You know, our mandate is to save 50% of the cloud. It will create that synergy and it will support any of the activities related with cloud optimization as a priority for the business, it just trickles down within the organization. So really sort of the best way to uh you know, close that gap is is is collaborate, set set of company wide goals and that success will be based on a set of cross functional teams delivering together as a whole. So we sort of add ascription, we have developed uh a product, uh document knowledge management that also helps sort of businesses save on cloud spend, we do it differently. We believe, you know, we were really sort of uh a data management platform.

So we, we took an approach, let's look at our data, let's look sort of how we can help and, and we created solution that really helped set up to save our customers 50% of our expenses. Uh It helped them to save uh time on doing manual analysis and it costs it, it cuts sort of cut down the time substantially uh by 70%. Uh 70 75% and, and really it eliminated because it's a tool that you can give it into the hands of business analysts and, and finance leaders and, and it leaders, you don't really need to rely on it and, and a lot of sort of extensive work and um it's uh just easy, simple tool that drives sort of uh results very, very quickly within the same day.

If you like to learn more happy to uh chat about it, hit me up on linkedin uh or you can learn more uh at scription.com. Thank you very much. And I will minimize my screen and take some questions. OK. So the question um in your experience, do the cost estimation advertised by CP CS? Do justice to planning for cloud spend. Could you repeat the third cloud spent challenge in the chat? Ok. Uh So let me, let me set it. Yeah, let me give it a go. Um So the third cloud spent challenge. I'm just gonna bring up this slide to the challenges, so limited accountability. So um I'll start with the third set of, you know, challenge. So, so what it means um sort of to me and again, I'm, I'm sharing sort of my perspective. It's, it's really sort of that lack of collaboration very often within uh the companies as a whole and, and looking at from that 360 Birds Eye sort of a business point of view, uh it is going to have accountability very often um within organizations related to the budget, but we know sort of no cloud has a much bigger impact on the business.

Um It has impacts on sort of charge backs to the client services to the clients. So just identifying sort of, you know, that as um you know, as a, as a goal sort of, you know, for it without sharing a shared responsibility across sort of different departments, finance or, you know, or, or, or other sort of, you know, engineering, that's what I mean by uh limited accountability that really sort of, you know, cloud expenses, it needs to be a shared and, and very often sort of the way it's positioned.

It's not in a collaborative type of a way it's, it's limited to it. I hope that answers sort of your question. So I I will try to sort of answer the question in your experience. Do the cost estimators advertised by CP CS do justice to planning for clouds spin. Um II I believe, sort of, you know, any, any, any tool, any vendor that provides you guidance and insights um and ability to estimate instead of what your cloud spend. Um It's a good start. It's uh you know, clouds span, it's very sort of, you know, it, it's complicated then really sort of, every business is a snowflake when we were delivering a solution um that we sort of, you know, decided, OK, you know why they cloud spend? It's a big business. We're gonna figure out we're gonna help everybody. Um Everybody has slightly different pinpoints and slightly different desires of what they need to do with cloud spend, how to manage cloud spend based on where they are with the maturity of their data. Uh where sort of, you know, some of the internal challenges uh sort of reside. So I think sort of, you know, the the estimators, it is a good start, but you need to spend more time really analyzing what are the data structures? What are the data challenges? Where is your cloud today and where do you uh foresee it goes and growing in the next, you know, 12 months, five years to really be able to create that robust set of a picture of what that cost estimate is going to be because it changes very quickly.

And um we've often heard stories just adding a simple database or something um that you're making a small, what you think is a change could be very costly for the business and a cost estimator. And even in a simple conversation, you will not be able to catch that sort of. Um So it, it requires intensive work to be able to plan. Well, thank you very much. Uh everyone, thank you for attending the session. Hope you enjoy the rest of the sessions. And um I uh if you, if you do have any further questions, please sort of look me up on linkedin and I'll be happy to connect. Thank you. Have a great day.