Cloud Cost Control for Azure Environment with SoftwareONE’s PyraCloud Platform

With over 1 million customers using the LA Metro bus and rail lines on a weekly basis it is key that the organization’s IT operations stay up and running to avoid services disruptions and enhance the user experience. LA Metro is looking to the cloud for great efficiencies on Microsoft Azure via an Enterprise Agreement (EA). In order to manage its cloud spend and not exceed the terms of its EA, the transportation company leveraged PyraCloud and quickly realized its cloud bills were trending 3x the budgeted amount. PyraCloud will help LA Metro stay within its targeted budget while still leveraging the cloud for the IT benefits it provides.

Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro), services over 1,433 square miles throughout the Los Angeles area. LA Metro serves as transportation planner and coordinator, designer, builder and operator for one of the country’s largest, most populous counties. More than 9.6 million people – nearly one-third of California’s residents – live, work and play within LA Metro’s 1,433 square miles service area. Over one million customers use both the bus and rail lines throughout the week. The organization employs approximately 10,000 individuals and is responsible for thousands of buses and rail lines throughout Los Angeles County.

Being part of the Transportation Systems Sector means that LA Metro needs to quickly, safely and securely move people to their destination. IT operations and teams play a big role in ensuring that LA Metro transportation services are available to customers with zero service disruption. As, such, IT needs to be calculated and fully vet any enhancements or adoption of new technologies. LA Metro is in the early stages of cloud adoption and the organization is taking a calculated approach in moving workloads to the cloud. LA Metro is using Microsoft Azure on an Enterprise Agreement (EA). To continue the adoption of cloud, business requirements, such as cost control need to be met by accurately tracking budgets, forecasts, and spend.

LA Metro initially started working with SoftwareONE to have a better understanding of spend associated with its Microsoft EA agreement. An Enterprise Agreement (EA) requires an annual spend commitment and LA Metro wanted to make sure that spend was within this commitment. SoftwareONE worked with LA Metro to deploy the PyraCloud Platform, specifically the Cloud Management module.

PyraCloud Platform Cloud Management Module enables organizations to govern and manage budget and spend of their cloud resources. As an end-to-end offering, it provides full transparency of cloud resources so customers can govern, control costs and optimize by providers, business units or applications.

PyraCloud delivered immediate benefits. LA Metro quickly gained insights into its Azure spend and realized that the Azure spend was trending to be 3X higher than the initial budget. The IT team was then able to drill down into specific cloud resources and work with Line of Business and other key stakeholders to take the following actions:

1. Identify high utilization Virtual Machines (VMs) and take proactive steps to throttle their use
2. Conduct automated shutdown of VMs during off hours
3. Work with development teams to turn down any VMs that were not being utilized

By taking these proactive steps, LA Metro was able to get its Azure spend in control and is using the PyraCloud Platform going forward to make sure cloud budgets are not exceeded for the term of the EA.