Cloud Cost Optimisation | Cloud Licensing

Cloud Investment Management made simple

Cloud cost management is quickly becoming the single largest commercial risk for IT, procurement and budget holders. Few organizations have robust processes, tools or methodologies for the planning, tracking and control of their cloud consumption costs. The impact of not being in control can be significant, with cloud overage costs tracking many times above the original budgeted amount and stakeholders not having the ability to mitigate this risk easily.

Optimizing a cloud ecosystem that includes IaaS, PaaS & SaaS requires a clear understanding of each cloud service, how it is charged and the factors that affect cost and value during it’s use. We are here to help.

To optimize and maintain control effectively requires solid data and refined methodologies, these are critical to fully profile the lifecycle costs and understand what interventions are required to maintain a level of optimization. Livingstone provides this capability within our Cloud Managed Services. Our Cloud Optimization services allows clients to take control of costs across their cloud ecosystem, so they can plan effectively, optimize when required and only pay for what they consume. This ensures they retain financial control of their ecosystem, resulting in lower and more predictable costs.

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Cloud Optimization & Negotiation Services

Managing cloud ecosystem costs are now seen as one of the main challenges facing organizations. In a recent study over 83% of respondents sight this as a primary concern. Unsurprisingly, we find clients overpaying by as much as 24% on their cloud estates, which, in many cases, can represent millions of dollars a year in wasted spend.

To develop a future forecast we must first ensure cloud spend is lean. To optimize a client’s cloud deployments, we first carry out a complete assessment of the current cloud ecosystem using our Hub Platform, this helps identify utilization rates of cloud features in the client’s cloud environment. Modernization of workloads is also considered which is effectively identifying whether newer instance types offer the same or higher performance for a lower investment.

We also review other aspects of a client’s traditional licensing spend, for example dual use rights – which allow the use existing on-premise licenses in the cloud – and also investigate any discrepancies between discounts secured for on-premise software that weren’t automatically applied to similar cloud services. Our team also review whether our clients are paying the correct amount for each cloud server and instance by comparing the organization’s expenditure to the prices advertised by their cloud vendors.

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Cloud Cost Management Services

So you can maintain an optimized cloud infrastructure and minimize ongoing expenditure, we help you understand current workloads, instances and licensing. To do this we establish a foundation of trustworthy data for your organization and produce an ongoing cloud forecast that will identify and mitigate avoidable or unnecessary costs.

To maintain a state of optimization we continue to validate your cloud requirements through our monthly Optimization Report and CloudOptics Platform. Our comprehensive reporting provides detailed utilization analytics, continuous trend vs commitment (CTC) tracking and a view of OpCo billing optimization intelligence that many tools simply cannot provide.

Throughout the lifecycle of your cloud contracts our Cloud Investment Advisors will monitor your cloud platforms and provide an insight into any commercial improvements that could provide additional savings. We hold ourselves accountable but also appraise the success rate of forecasts during the span of your contracts, ensuring savings are delivered as expected.

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Cloud Investment Management Platform

Our range of Cloud Investment Management services is powered by our Hub platform, this provides our clients with a consolidated management view of their cloud consumption. By providing intelligence through aggregated reporting and detailed dashboards, our Hub platform can provide the information that allows organizations to maximize savings throughout the cloud deployment lifecycle.

Cloud portfolio visibility – Access cloud usage data across providers
Consolidated spend data – Single portal view of cloud provider spend across separate billing regions & entities
Accounting breakdowns – Allocate regional costs as required for internal cost cross-charge
Sandbox cloud environments – test use cases & spend projections inc. optimized use of Reserved Instances.

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Unique expertise & intelligence

Livingstone gives clients both visibility of their entire ecosystem and ongoing recommendations on how to optimize their cloud spend. Our global team of Cloud Investment Managers help clients explore the opportunities and prioritize on the actions that will make the biggest impact or saving for their organization.

IaaS – assess workload requirements & optimize consumption models between PAYG & reserved cloud instances.
PaaS – ensure storage costs are optimized & aligned to predicted spend. Identify preferential cost models for the future requirements
SaaS – ensure subscription tiers deliver maximum value & user accounts are cost optimized based on status & usage activity
Value Management – ensures that future contracts contain products that are right-sized for future consumption.

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Leaders in our field

Our team of industry experts have negotiated some of the largest and most complex cloud and software vendor contracts globally, for a wide variety of clients including domestic and international enterprises and a wide variety of Public Sector organizations. They have many years experience of working with and for cloud vendors, working to proven methodology to deliver significant client outcomes for their cloud and software estates.

Crown Commercial Service Supplier

Our Cloud Services can be procured by Government and other Public Sector bodies through the UK Crown Commercial Service’s (CCS) G-Cloud 12 Framework, our services are now listed on Lot 2 – Cloud Software and on Lot 3 – Cloud Support services. Our group is also able to provide services G-Cloud through the Digital Outcomes & Specialists 4 framework, for more information please visit our news page or the CCS Digital Market Place.