Case Study - Strategy and Business Process Optimization for Federal Cloud PMO

Challenge

This US federal agency’s Cloud PMO faced a monumental task: developing a cloud strategy and business processes to migrate and operate services in the cloud for a federated and global workforce. They required project management services, policy development, and cloud cost awareness during application modernization and migration, all while minimizing disruptions.

Solution

ManTech’s solution, shaped by our national security expertise and understanding of FinOps, addressed the agency’s challenges head-on. FinOps, blending Finance and DevOps, maximizes cloud business value through financial accountability and best practices. Our approach involved:

• Providing strategic support through mission and vision statements, briefings for stakeholders across the component organizations (e.g., leaders, product owners, budget, application development teams) and cloud strategy workshops

• Developing a tagging taxonomy for cost allocation to ensure traceability and accurate cost accounting for cloud resources

• Developing enterprise-level cloud business policies and guidelines

• Applying FinOps principles to optimize cloud programs and manage costs effectively, including detailed cost breakdowns for essential components like VMs, Storage Accounts, and Azure services

• Crafting a comprehensive cloud communications plan to highlight operational and cost benefits, including detailed cost estimates and total cost of ownership

• Implementing cost-saving measures, including negotiating 1- or 3-year commitments for specific Azure products
• Designing common services solutions and overseeing their integration and maintenance

Impact

We thrive when our customer’s mission is successful. Through implementation of FinOps, our solution for this Federal Agency revolutionized their approach to managing cloud costs.  Our solution:

• Considered cost balanced with mission need for all architectural and process decisions

• Modernized underlying architecture and business processes governing over 50 applications

• Avoided unnecessary cloud cost through the negotiation of multi-year commitment at a 5% lower rate than a single year commits