Bourne Leisure
Shifting Cloud Costs Left: Bourne Leisure’s Journey to Proactive Cloud Cost Management with Infracost
Bourne Leisure, represented by Madoc Batters, Head of Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE), and Rich Young, Cloud Architect, is a testament to effective cloud management and cost optimization in a complex business landscape. The company, operating prominent UK holiday brands, faced the intricate challenge of managing a diverse cloud infrastructure across its vast array of services. This challenge was amplified by their holiday brands’ varying needs and the leisure industry’s dynamic nature.
At the heart of Bourne Leisure’s strategy was a commitment to infrastructure-as-code, emphasizing Terraform and GitHub for all deployments. Madoc and Rich’s focus on
standardization, repeatability, and efficiency in cloud deployments underscores their forward-thinking technological approach. They recognized early on that managing cloud costs effectively was not just about technology but about creating a culture where every team member is empowered to make data-driven decisions.
At the heart of Bourne Leisure’s strategy was a commitment to infrastructure-as-code, emphasizing Terraform and GitHub for all deployments. Madoc and Rich’s focus on standardization, repeatability, and efficiency in cloud deployments underscores their forward-thinking technological approach. They recognized early on that managing cloud costs effectively was not just about technology but about creating a culture where every team member is empowered to make data-driven decisions.
Madoc and Rich’s insights into the integration and impact of Infracost at Bourne Leisure highlight the tool’s role in transforming their approach to FinOps and infrastructure optimization.
Key results
Cost Prevention
Bourne Leisure, through the implementation of Infracost, successfully prevented 15% in cloud costs. This achievement underscores the tool’s effectiveness in providing visibility and control over cloud expenses.
Issue Detection and Best Practices
The integration of Infracost led to the detection of over 2,000 issues across their code repositories. This spanned various critical areas such as tagging, compute, databases, block storage, object storage, and logging, ensuring adherence to best practices in cloud management.
Time Savings and Decision Enhancement
Infracost proved a significant time-saver for Bourne Leisure’s engineering teams. It enabled them to make data-driven decisions that increased business value and streamlined their cloud infrastructure management processes.
challenge
Bourne Leisure grappled with standardizing cloud deployments and managing costs amidst rapid expansion and the complexities of cloud pricing models, emphasizing the need for a strategic approach to cloud infrastructure management.
Solution
By adopting Infracost and integrating it into their CI/CD pipelines, Bourne Leisure moved towards a ‘shift-left’ approach, gaining immediate insights into cloud costs and fostering a proactive, cost-aware culture among their engineering teams.
Results
Implementing Infracost enabled Bourne Leisure to prevent around 15% in cloud costs, detect over 2,000 infrastructure issues, and significantly save time for engineering teams, showcasing the tool’s effectiveness in cloud cost management and operational efficiency.
Challenges
“If you spin up an AWS account and try and do it all in a console, there’s no way you’re going to get any level of standardization.“
Madoc Batters, Head of Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE)
Bourne Leisure encountered several challenges in their journey towards efficient cloud infrastructure management. Their primary challenges revolved around the complexities of maintaining consistency and efficiency in cloud operations across various brands within the company.
One significant challenge was the lack of standardization in cloud deployments. As Madoc pointed out, “If you spin up an AWS account and try and do it all in a console, there’s no way you’re going to get any level of standardization.” This lack of standardization made management difficult and posed risks in terms of security and compliance.
Another critical issue was the focus on rapid deployment, often at the expense of cost optimization and compliance. Rich highlighted this concern, noting that developers are driven towards “time to delivery, not time to consistency, or time to security, or time to cost optimization.” This approach often led to deployments that were not cost-effective or fully compliant with company policies. For example, previous generation instance types were used, or tags required for cost reports were missed or had typos in them.
Furthermore, the complexity of cloud pricing models added another layer of difficulty, making it challenging for the team to understand and manage cloud costs effectively. Madoc emphasized the difficulty of grasping cloud pricing, which consisted of “so many different services.”
These challenges necessitated a solution that addressed cost management and encouraged a shift in the culture towards more efficient and compliant cloud infrastructure deployment.
Solution
“We’ve integrated it into our CI/CD pipelines. It’s about getting that immediate feedback.“
Rich Young, Cloud Architect
The solution to Bourne Leisure’s cloud management challenges was refined through a ‘shift-left’ approach with Infracost, enhancing sustainable and efficient cloud management. By integrating Infracost into CI/CD pipelines, Bourne Leisure achieved real-time feedback on cloud costs, which is pivotal for informed resource deployment decisions. This integration, emphasized by Madoc, enabled dynamic assessment of cost implications, aligning with company policies for cost-effectiveness and compliance.
Madoc emphasized the value of this integration, stating, “We’ve integrated it into our CI/CD pipelines. It’s about getting that immediate feedback.” This immediate insight allowed the cloud engineering team to dynamically assess the cost implications of their infrastructure decisions, ensuring cost-effectiveness and compliance with company policies.
Furthermore, Infracost’s adoption fostered a cultural evolution within the engineering teams, embedding cost-awareness into development processes. Rich noted this cultural shift, highlighting the emphasis on preemptive cost considerations. This ‘shift-left’ strategy facilitated a proactive stance on cost management and ingrained a disciplined approach to cloud resource deployment, aligning technical initiatives with financial accountability and operational efficiency.
In summary, the solution to Bourne Leisure’s challenges was not just a tool but a transformation in their approach to cloud infrastructure management, with Infracost at the core of this change.
The Infracost Impact
Integrating Infracost into Bourne Leisure’s practices brought a transformative shift in cloud infrastructure management, notably through the ‘shift-left’ approach. By embedding Infracost directly into their CI/CD pipelines, Bourne Leisure’s team gained early insights into cloud costs, enabling a proactive stance on managing expenses.
This new approach significantly shifted the company’s cloud management culture. The engineering teams began to incorporate cost considerations into their decision-making process more thoroughly, enhancing their understanding of the financial implications of their cloud infrastructure choices. Infracost’s real-time cost feedback was instrumental in this transformation. This integration allowed for immediate visibility of potential costs, facilitating more informed and cost-effective decision-making.
Madoc and Rich underscored Infracost’s role as more than a tool; it became a partner, offering real-time feedback and fostering a relationship based on collaboration and mutual growth. This partnership was pivotal in standardizing deployments and ensuring cost efficiency across diverse cloud environments, marking Infracost as both an effective cost management solution and a catalyst for change within cloud engineering practices, aligning technical decisions with financial awareness and responsibility.
Results
Implementing Infracost at Bourne Leisure led to significant results, as Madoc and Rich elaborated. The tool’s integration into their cloud infrastructure significantly enhanced their cost management and optimization strategies.
- Cost Prevention: A major achievement was the prevention of around 15% in cloud costs. This was a direct result of engineers gaining visibility into potential costs before deploying changes, enabling them to make more optimal decisions.
- Issue Detection and Best Practice Implementation: Infracost’s capabilities extended beyond cost prevention. It played a vital role in detecting over 2,000 issues across Bourne Leisure’s code repositories. These issues covered critical areas such as tagging, compute, databases, block storage, object storage, and logging, aligning with FinOps best practices and policies.
- Time Savings and Enhanced Decision-Making: Infracost was not just a financial tool; it was transformative in saving significant time for engineering teams. This efficiency boost allowed the teams to focus more on strategic initiatives, enhancing business value. The tool enabled data-driven decision-making, aligning technical actions with Bourne Leisure’s broader business objectives.
The overall impact of Infracost at Bourne Leisure was profound, demonstrating its effectiveness as a comprehensive cloud cost management and optimization solution.
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