Cloud FinOps
Whose cloud spend is this? Your finance team shouldn’t have to ask.
Cloud FinOps is not billing reporting. Straitworks builds and runs the programs that bring multi-cloud spend under governance, across the full cloud lifecycle on GCP, AWS and Azure.
Built for enterprises where cloud spend is material, federated across business units, and scrutinized by finance and audit.
How We Help
Four ways we turn cloud spend into a governed, defensible number.
Know who spent what, across every cloud
We establish the FinOps operating model: cost allocation standards, accountability, showback and chargeback, applied uniformly over Azure, AWS and GCP.
Deliverable
A practice your CFO and your architects both sign off on.
Build a FinOps practice that outlives the consultant
We stand up a FinOps function from scratch: team design, tooling, data pipelines, KPIs, budgeting and forecasting, taken from crawl to run.
Deliverable
A self-sustaining FinOps capability, not a consultant dependency.
Forecasts finance trusts, variances leadership can act on
Cost models for migrations and new solutions, consumption forecasts, budget-versus-actual analysis, and unit economics per project and business unit.
Deliverable
A defensible forecast model and a monthly variance narrative leadership can act on.
Programs that ship, on time and on budget
FinOps and cloud programs run end to end with disciplined Agile delivery, the way our flagship multi-cloud program ran: zero missed reporting cycles.
Deliverable
A multi-year record of continuous, on-time delivery.
Capabilities
Governance & Operating Model
- FinOps Governance & Operating Model Design
- Cost Allocation, Showback & Chargeback
- Tagging & Metadata Strategy
Cost, Budget & Optimization
- Multi-Cloud Cost Management (GCP, AWS, Azure)
- Cloud Budgeting & Forecasting
- Commitment Governance (Reservations, Savings Plans, CUDs, Hybrid Benefit)
Reporting, Data & Delivery
- Executive Dashboards & FinOps KPIs
- Cost-Aware Architecture Reviews
- Program & Delivery Management
An operating model, not a dashboard.
We apply the FinOps Framework phases (Inform, Optimize, Operate) as concrete, sequenced deliverables, embedded across Day 0 solutioning, Day 1 provisioning and Day 2 operations on all three clouds.
Governance & Operating Model
The FinOps framework, governance model, policies and operating rhythm, with accountability defined across subscriptions, projects, applications and business units. Showback, and chargeback where finance is ready for it.
Cost Management & Optimization
Visibility across Microsoft Cost Management, AWS Cost Explorer and GCP Cloud Billing, plus consolidated reporting. Idle, oversized and orphaned resources identified, commitment coverage governed, savings validated against approved baselines.
Budgeting, Forecasting & Financial Planning
Annual and multi-year budgets built with finance and platform teams. Consumption forecasts for existing workloads, planned migrations and growth, with monthly budget-versus-actual analysis and material variances explained.
Reporting, Analytics & Executive Insight
Operational and executive dashboards covering spend, variance, forecasts, tagging compliance and optimization progress, with FinOps KPIs that measure maturity and accountability.
The gap we close in practice.
Multi-cloud estates run on three billing formats, three tagging conventions and three sets of native tools that do not talk to each other. What enterprises lack is cost transparency with accountability: whose spend is this, and does the data hold up when finance or an auditor asks.
Before: three clouds, three billing formats, three tagging conventions. Spend no business unit owned, reconciliation done by hand, numbers nobody could defend.
After: one governance model, one tagging standard, one allocation model across all three clouds. Spend owned by every business unit, validation automated, numbers finance can defend.
The difference is not tooling. It is a governance model, an operating rhythm, and a partner who can talk to the CFO and the cloud architect in the same meeting.
Proven at hyperscale.
Not theory. These are the numbers a multi-year, multi-cloud governance program delivered under our leadership.
US$500M
Annual cloud spend governed
Under full visibility across three providers
GCP · AWS · Azure
Hyperscale providers
One operating model over all three
60-65%
Savings against list price
Commitment purchases renegotiated against real usage
9,000+
Cloud projects consolidated
Registered, attributed and validated
Case Study
Enterprise Cloud FinOps Program
Led by Straitworks’ Managing Director, a multi-year Cloud FinOps governance program for a Fortune 150 company: full visibility into annual cloud spend across GCP, AWS and Azure, with 14 business units and 9,000+ cloud projects registered, attributed and validated.
The Problem
Cloud cost data existed everywhere and was trusted nowhere. Each business unit reconciled its own spend manually, on its own definitions, and engineering could not see the cost and usage breakdown of what it was building.
The Approach
Built from the ground up with the organization’s FinOps head and business unit heads: the operating model, cost allocation standards, project tagging taxonomy, commitment purchase cadence and Agile delivery, delivered by a 13-person cross-functional team with zero missed reporting cycles.
The Platform
The linchpin was the Self Service Tagging Portal, a custom tagging and metadata platform we conceived and built. Billing data from all three providers was normalized to the FOCUS Specification, orchestrated with Cloud Scheduler and Pub/Sub, with BigQuery, Looker and Data Studio behind it.
The Result
The estate moved from unallocated and disputed to governed and defensible: 9,000+ projects registered across 14 business units, US$500M of annual spend under full visibility, and commitment purchases renegotiated against real usage, landing 60 to 65 percent savings against list price.
“US$500M of annual cloud spend. One ledger finance and engineering both trust.”
How Engagements Run
What an engagement looks like
- 1
Month 1-3: FinOps maturity assessment across all cloud accounts: current spend, tagging coverage, allocation gaps and reconciliation pain points.
- 2
Month 3-6: Target operating model and roadmap: governance design, cost allocation standards, tooling recommendations and reporting cadence.
- 3
Month 6-9: Program build: governance forums stood up, standards rolled out across accounts and business units, and the first full reporting cycle run end to end.
- 4
Ongoing: program build or uplift on retainer.
Engagements are contracted on a retainer basis, minimum 6 months.