Cost analysis & baseline
Where the spend actually goes, unit-economics view, unused-resource inventory. The starting point for everything that follows.
- Cost Explorer
- CUR
- Athena
Cloud · Optimization & FinOps
Cloud that pays for itself.
Right-size the run. Own the spend. FinOps discipline that turns the cloud bill into a lever the business can pull.
Cloud spend without a FinOps discipline drifts. Phoenix delivers cost optimization and FinOps operating models that put finance, engineering and product on the same page, so the cloud bill becomes a lever the business can pull, not a monthly surprise.
We run the technical optimization (right-sizing, savings plans, storage tiering, unused resource clean-up) alongside the organizational work: tagging, showback / chargeback, budgets and the cadence that keeps it all honest.
What's in scope.
Right-sizing
Compute, storage and database sizing against actual utilization patterns, not the initial estimate that got over-provisioned six months ago.
- Compute Optimizer
- Trusted Advisor
Savings Plans & reserved capacity
Commitment strategy: which workloads to commit, at what horizon, on which purchase family. Reviewed on a proper cadence.
- Savings Plans
- RIs
Tagging & showback
Tag strategy that stays enforced, cost allocation by owner / product / environment, showback reports that finance actually uses.
- Tag policies
- Cost allocation
FinOps operating model
Cadence, ownership, decision rights. The FinOps discipline stood up as a habit, not a one-off review.
- FinOps Foundation
- KPIs
The approach.
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01
Baseline
Current spend, unit economics, top-10 waste candidates.
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02
Quick wins
Right-sizing, unused resources, storage tiering, easy commitments: delivered in the first 4 to 6 weeks.
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03
Discipline
FinOps operating model stood up: cadence, roles, reporting. Habit-forming, not one-off.
Named deliverables.
Every engagement lands specific artefacts, not slides.
- Baseline spend analysis with unit economics
- Quick-win optimization delivered against measurable targets
- Right-sizing and commitment strategy live
- Tagging + showback rolled out; cost transparent by owner
- FinOps operating model handed to the customer's team
The wider cloud practice.
Landing Zone setup & deployment
Foundations that hold: production-ready from day one.
Migration
Wave-based migration: MAP-funded on AWS, minimal disruption to run-the-business operations.
Modernization
Applications, data and databases: refactored for cloud, not just moved to it.
Managed services
24/7 run under SLA: two tracks, one run team.
Frequently asked
Is this FinOps or generic cost cutting?
FinOps in the FinOps Foundation sense: a discipline that combines engineering, finance and operations to make cloud spend a first-class business input. Not a one-shot cost-cut; an ongoing operating model with monthly reviews, anomaly alerts and forecast tracking.
Do you touch commitments (Savings Plans, Reserved Instances) directly?
Both models offered. Phoenix can advise and let your finance team execute purchases, or run commitment portfolios end-to-end under a mandate: modelling, purchasing and lifecycle management (renewals, exchanges, exit).
How often should Well-Architected reviews run?
For a live estate, quarterly on the whole workload set, with lightweight monthly checks on the highest-cost workloads. New workloads get a WAR before go-live. All findings feed into a shared remediation backlog with the CloudOps team.
Can you optimize without a full landing-zone rebuild?
Yes. Cost optimization is delivered against the existing estate as-is; landing-zone remediation is a separate track that can run in parallel where governance is materially deficient. The two work well together but neither depends on the other.
Does optimization cover the data layer?
Yes: Redshift concurrency scaling and pause/resume, EMR right-sizing, Athena query patterns, S3 storage-class tiering, Glue job cost patterns and lakehouse-wide storage lifecycle. Data-layer waste is often the biggest single opportunity in a mature estate.
The earliest conversations are usually the most useful.
Whether you're scoping an SAP move to cloud, restarting a stalled programme, or just trying to figure out where data and AI fit, start with a conversation.
