As cloud has been adopted over these past 15 years, organizations are under increasing pressure to optimize cloud spend while still driving innovation. One of our recent success stories involves a leading media company that not only achieved significant cost savings on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), but also reinvested those savings into transformative technology—specifically, Oracle Autonomous Database.
The media company had a robust presence on OCI, leveraging various services including compute, storage, and traditional database workloads. However, as their infrastructure grew, so did their cloud bills, without a clear correlation to business value. They faced three primary issues:
- Lack of centralized visibility into cloud spend
- Underutilized and always-on compute instances
- Manual database management requires a heavy operational overhead
Our FinOps assessment quickly revealed that much of their spend was driven by inefficient resource usage and missed opportunities for automation.
Our team took a structured FinOps approach that involved:
Detailed Consumption Analysis
Using OCI Cost Analysis tools and our proprietary insights, we mapped consumption by department, service, and workload. This exposed over-provisioned compute instances and unused block storage.
Right-Sizing and Scheduling
We identified idle and oversized compute instances and implemented automated scheduling for non-production workloads, aligning usage with business hours.
Transition to Oracle Autonomous Database
We proposed migrating several operational reporting and analytics workloads to Oracle Autonomous Database. This eliminated the need for manual tuning and patching, introducing automatic scaling based on demand.
The Results of this exercise were 30% OCI Savings and a shift toward innovation
These savings were not just bottom-line improvements; they enabled strategic reinvestment.
This shift is empowering their technology team to focus less on infrastructure management and more on delivering new capabilities to the business.
Conclusion
What started as a cost optimization exercise turned into a springboard for modernization. By applying FinOps principles and aligning cloud usage with business value, this media company transformed their cloud strategy from reactive cost control to proactive innovation.
If your organization is looking to optimize OCI usage and reinvest in technologies that drive growth, we’d love to help you do the same.
