From spiraling cloud spend to strategic control: how a global manufacturer built a scalable FinOps practice with SoftwareOne

Cloud adoption was accelerating faster than financial control

The global manufacturer relied heavily on public cloud to support a growing portfolio of mechanical, electronic and software-enabled products. However, its approach to cloud financial management was still at an early stage. Departments managed Azure resources in different ways, engineers could provision services with limited central governance, and cost ownership was difficult to establish. 

The organization had also entered a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement with a EUR 250 million commitment. It received a 20% discount against pay-as-you-go rates and an additional 6% discount against three-year Reserved Instance pricing. Encouraged to increase consumption so the commitment would be used, departments accelerated adoption. Within three months, the Azure spending trajectory had exceeded the commitment by 15%. 

A two-person internal team was asked to establish FinOps alongside its existing responsibilities. To regain control quickly, the organization selected SoftwareOne for a clear strategy, relevant expertise and a practical sequence of milestones.

Creating visibility, accountability and a FinOps culture

SoftwareOne began by helping the organization create a live showback model for Azure costs. Because the customer required the reporting solution to be developed in-house for data privacy, the team used the Azure billing API to ingest current spending data and built a tailored dashboard in Power BI. Costs were initially allocated through Azure subscriptions, giving executives and finance teams a clearer view of departmental spending while helping resource and product owners understand which services were driving costs. 

The reporting model later expanded through Databricks to include AWS data. Subscription naming conventions were standardized, and a policy-backed tagging approach helped ensure that cloud resources carried the labels needed for reliable allocation and reporting. 

Technology alone would not change spending behavior. SoftwareOne therefore supported interactive FinOps sessions across the organization, explaining shared accountability and the need for engineering, finance, procurement and leadership to collaborate. The team demonstrated the reporting dashboard, gathered feedback and helped create cloud fundamentals training for new joiners. FinOps principles were embedded into that training so employees could understand both how cloud enables the business and how consumption translates into cost. 

• Azure billing API data ingestion 
• Power BI showback reporting 
• Databricks reporting model incorporating AWS costs 
• Standardized subscription naming and policy-backed tagging 
• FinOps awareness sessions and cloud fundamentals training

 

Evidence-led negotiation unlocks greater cloud value

The analysis changed the Savings Plans discussion from a straightforward purchasing decision into an evidence-led commercial negotiation. The organization wanted the flexibility of Savings Plans because it expected to keep investing in Azure, but it also needed the economics to improve on its existing pay-as-you-go position. 

SoftwareOne and the internal FinOps team demonstrated where the proposed rates created risk. With procurement involved, the organization negotiated additional discounts of 8% for one-year Azure Savings Plans and 13% for three-year plans. Once the revised terms were agreed, the FinOps team modeled several commitment-rate options and showed the potential discount against pay-as-you-go rates using a shared-scope approach. 

The customer ultimately adopted multiple three-year Savings Plans with a combined commitment of EUR 110 per hour. Forecast savings were close to EUR 2.5 million. Combined with the approximately EUR 1.3 million mitigated through Reserved Instances, the engagement established a clear financial case for FinOps while preserving flexibility for workloads whose resource types may change over time.