The Client

An international financial institution headquartered in Western Europe, operating in a multi-cloud model (GCP + AWS). The organization was running several digital transformation programs simultaneously, while its cloud environment was growing rapidly – particularly in the area of data analytics and the BigQuery platform.

Due to increasing infrastructure costs and pressure for greater budget transparency, the client decided to implement FinOps practices across the entire organization.

The problem

Cloud costs were growing faster than the revenue generated by digital initiatives. There was no full visibility of costs at the product or team level.

The key challenges

• lack of a standardized showback/chargeback model,
• suboptimal use of CUDs, Reserved Instances, and Savings Plans,
• inconsistent resource tagging strategy,
• lack of cost comparability between workloads running on GCP and AWS,
• cost reporting limited to a technical level without meaningful translation into business decisions.

The organization needed a senior expert who could quickly take responsibility for analysis and architectural recommendations -without interfering with application code.

The solution

Within a staff augmentation model, we provided a Senior Cloud / FinOps Architect with strong experience in GCP and cost optimization projects in the financial sector.

The expert joined the client’s architecture team and was responsible for:

• analyzing billing data from GCP (BigQuery Billing Export) and AWS (Cost Explorer, CUR),
• integrating and processing cost data to identify inefficiencies,
• assessing FinOps maturity and identifying cost gaps (overprovisioning, lack of CUD/SP optimization),
• reviewing the tagging model and cost allocation strategy,
• comparing workload costs across GCP and AWS environments,
• designing dashboards and reports for technical and financial teams (BigQuery, SQL, BI),
• preparing architectural recommendations with estimated savings potential,
• presenting analysis results at the executive level.

The project was delivered in close collaboration with the client’s Engineering, Product, and Finance teams.

The conclusions

• Full cost transparency across the multi-cloud environment.
• Identification of potential savings representing a significant portion of the annual cloud budget.
• A standardized showback cost allocation model implemented across the organization.
• A FinOps optimization roadmap for the next 12–18 months.
• Strengthened architectural capabilities without building a dedicated FinOps team.

The client gained strategic control over cloud costs and established a foundation for further scalable, data-driven multi-cloud transformation.