What we deliver
Cloud bills grow quietly. Resources are created for a test and never removed, servers are sized generously at launch and never revisited, and data transfer charges appear without anyone having planned for them. Twara Technologies makes your cloud spend understandable, removes waste without putting reliability at risk, and sets up the governance that keeps costs under control afterwards.
The FinOps Foundation defines FinOps as an operational framework and cultural practice for maximising the business value of technology, built on collaboration between engineering, finance and business teams. Its framework describes three iterative phases: Inform, Optimize and Operate. Our work follows the same cycle.
Typical scope
- Single-account and multi-account estates on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
- Compute: virtual machines, containers, Kubernetes clusters and serverless functions.
- Databases and analytics services, checked for over-provisioning.
- Storage: lifecycle policies, archive tiers, snapshot retention and backup copies.
- Networking: data transfer between regions and zones, NAT gateways, load balancers and content delivery.
- Licensing for commercial databases and operating systems.
- Non-production environments that could be scheduled off outside working hours.
Technologies we work with
- Native cost tools: AWS Cost Explorer and Budgets, Azure Cost Management, and Google Cloud Billing reports. These are the first port of call because they work directly on each provider’s billing data.
- Billing exports: detailed cost and usage exports to a data warehouse or analytics tool when you need custom reports, chargeback or showback.
- Provider recommendations: right-sizing and idle-resource recommendations from each provider’s advisor services, which we validate against real workload behaviour before acting.
- Kubernetes cost allocation: tools such as OpenCost when shared clusters make it hard to see which team or service is driving spend.
- Infrastructure as code: Terraform, OpenTofu or native tools, so tagging standards and schedules are enforced consistently and not applied by hand.
How we approach it
- Inform. Establish a cost baseline, apply or repair tagging, and allocate spend to owners. Without this, every other step is guesswork.
- Find opportunities. Analyse utilisation, idle resources, storage growth, data transfer and pricing models. Each opportunity is recorded with estimated effort, risk and the owner who must approve it.
- Optimise. Make changes in order of value and safety: remove confirmed waste, schedule non-production environments, right-size, move storage to suitable tiers, then tackle architectural changes.
- Commit, where it makes sense. Once usage is steady, model commitment discounts against your expected growth and recommend a cautious level of cover.
- Operate. Budgets, anomaly alerts and a regular review rhythm with engineering and finance keep the gains from eroding.
Quality and security
- No surprises for users. Changes that affect capacity are scheduled, monitored and reversible.
- Owner confirmation. Nothing is deleted on the basis of a tool’s recommendation alone; owners confirm, and snapshots or exports are taken where data might be needed later.
- Reliability preserved. Cost is one pillar among several. The AWS Well-Architected Framework treats cost optimisation alongside security, reliability, performance efficiency, operational excellence and sustainability, and so do we.
- Least-privilege access. Analysis uses read-only access; changes use separately approved roles.
- Audit trail. Every change is logged with its reason, approver and measured effect.
Signs it is time for a cost review
- The monthly bill has grown faster than usage, customers or revenue.
- Nobody can say with confidence which application or team is responsible for the largest costs.
- Test and development environments run around the clock although they are used only during working hours.
- Storage and snapshot volumes keep growing with no retention policy behind them.
- Commitment discounts were bought some time ago and nobody has checked whether they still match usage.
- Data transfer or NAT charges are a surprisingly large line on the invoice.
Any one of these is reason enough to start. A review establishes the facts first, so decisions are based on data rather than anxiety about the size of the bill.
Engagement options
- Cost review: a fixed-scope analysis that produces the baseline and a prioritised list of savings opportunities.
- Review and implementation: Twara Technologies carries out the agreed changes and sets up budgets, alerts and dashboards.
- Ongoing FinOps support: periodic reviews and continuous optimisation, often combined with managed cloud operations.
Contact us to start with a review of your current cloud spend.