Cloudy With A Chance of Brain - Bringing the Cloud Down to Earth

Cost is often one of the main drivers for adopting the cloud, but it's not always plain sailing once you get there. Cloud bills are complicated, so it can be a challenge to understand where your money is being spent, never mind how to manage and optimise that spend to get the biggest bang for your buck!
Luckily, our guest is here to help!
Ashley Hromatko, Senior FinOps Manager at Pearson, joins Aled and Alasdair to discuss cloud, costs and cultural change. Ashley is a founding member of and currently serves on the Technical Advisory Council for FinOps Foundation, and so is the perfect guest to talk about the financial impetus towards cloud, what FinOps is and how it's helped Pearson to grow and the importance of accountability and visibility when it comes to understanding your cloud costs.
Ashley is recognised as a leader in the emerging discipline of FinOps and is responsible for building Pearson's Global FinOps practice which spans 600+ AWS accounts. Pearson is one of AWS largest public sector customers, so Ashley has a huge amount of practical experience (and advice) for those looking to migrate to cloud and understand their costs better.
We also get an insight into what 'good cloud' looks like with Pearson's FinOps team and some of the struggles and successes the team has faced to reach its current level of maturity.
FinOps
Connect with Ashley and learn more about FinOps Principles.
About the hosts
Aled Sage (VP Engineering at Cloudsoft) brings 20 years of experience developing distributed applications, mostly in the enterprise sector. Particular areas of interest include devops, automation, cloud, concurrency and distributed systems. Prior to joining Cloudsoft, Aled was Chief Architect at Enigmatec Corporation. He holds a PhD (Computer Science) from the University of St Andrews.
Connect with Aled
Alasdair Hodge (Principal Engineer and Solutions Architect at Cloudsoft) is a leadingauthority in cloud, software applications and automation across all major cloud platforms, he has been engaged in the design and optimisation of cloud services in banking and finance and other service-based sectors such as telecoms, electronic design and supply-chain automation for over 12 years.
Connect with Alasdair

About Cloudsoft
Cloudsoft specialise in applications, automation and the cloud. Our top-down, application-centric approach is what sets us apart and empowers our customers to tame their IT estates and drive real business value.

Our public cloud IT transformation expertise is embedded our Tempo cloud services, helping our clients to transform faster and exploit the benefits of cloud. We’re an active contributor to the Apache Brooklyn open source project, an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner with Well-Architected, Microsoft Workloads, DevOps Competencies, a FinOps Foundation Member and a FinOps Certified Service Provider.
Our flagship AMP software is a Digital Platform Conductor, enabling customers in Banking, Defence and other heavily regulated industries to cut through the complexity of their estates. This maximises value from their technology investments, drives down costs and reduces risks. Cloudsoft AMP is the only product which strategically manages applications throughout their lifecycles across hybrid infrastructures, regardless of environment or location.

We're based in Edinburgh, UK, but work with clients around the world.

Can you trade cloud like you trade coal?

This month Aled and Alasdair are joined by Dr James Mitchell, founder and CEO of Strategic Blue. Strategic Blue specialise in cloud financial operations and partner with leading cloud vendors like AWS, Microsoft and Google to bring a commodity trading approach to cloud resale.

A scientist by training, James’ journey to cloud was an unconventional one. From a PhD in DNA Nanotechnology to commodities trading and investing in green data centers, we delve into how James developed Strategic Blue’s unique approach, how it helps them offer better prices than the vendors themselves and the options for cloud consumers to manage and optimise their costs.

This approach to cost optimisation, coupled with FinOps Principles, helps to accelerate cloud adoption within organisations, so James has some great tips for quick wins to save on your cloud spend alongside longer term solutions for optimisation.

We also talk about the need to educate CFOs about the value of cloud, especially in unpredictable times and how to join up Financial Operations with Cloud Operations for maximum value.

You can listen to Strategic Blue’s own podcast, What’s New In Cloud FinOps, here.
About the hosts
Aled Sage (VP Engineering at Cloudsoft) brings 20 years of experience developing distributed applications, mostly in the enterprise sector. Particular areas of interest include devops, automation, cloud, concurrency and distributed systems. Prior to joining Cloudsoft, Aled was Chief Architect at Enigmatec Corporation. He holds a PhD (Computer Science) from the University of St Andrews.
Connect with Aled
Alasdair Hodge (Principal Engineer and Solutions Architect at Cloudsoft) is a leadingauthority in cloud, software applications and automation across all major cloud platforms, he has been engaged in the design and optimisation of cloud services in banking and finance and other service-based sectors such as telecoms, electronic design and supply-chain automation for over 12 years.
Connect with Alasdair

About Cloudsoft
Cloudsoft specialise in applications, automation and the cloud. Our top-down, application-centric approach is what sets us apart and empowers our customers to tame their IT estates and drive real business value.

Our public cloud IT transformation expertise is embedded our Tempo cloud services, helping our clients to transform faster and exploit the benefits of cloud. We’re an active contributor to the Apache Brooklyn open source project, an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner with Well-Architected, Microsoft Workloads, DevOps Competencies, a FinOps Foundation Member and a FinOps Certified Service Provider.
Our flagship AMP software is a Digital Platform Conductor, enabling customers in Banking, Defence and other heavily regulated industries to cut through the complexity of their estates. This maximises value from their technology investments, drives down costs and reduces risks. Cloudsoft AMP is the only product which strategically manages applications throughout their lifecycles across hybrid infrastructures, regardless of environment or location.

We're based in Edinburgh, UK, but work with clients around the world.

Aviation has been particularly hard-hit by the covid-19 pandemic. Restrictions on travel and customer confidence saw passenger numbers at Edinburgh Airport, Scotland's busiest airport, drop by over 90%. Airports are complex, tech-rich environments with high security needs and IT estates which cover everything from Air Traffic Control towers and boarding card scanners to get you to Security to apps where you can pay for parking, or order food to your seat in the Departure Lounge.
We caught up with Alec Hodgson, Head of Digital at Edinburgh Airport, and Berit Jimmink, Digital Product Manager at Edinburgh Airport, about how the cloud has enabled them to respond to passenger needs and given them freedom to experiment and innovate.
We also talk about building trust between Digital teams and IT operations in high-security environments, getting business buy-in for new digital initiatives and how the team used the lockdown period to develop innovative commercial digital products for the Airport.
Connect with Alec and Berit.
About the hosts
Aled Sage (VP Engineering at Cloudsoft) brings 20 years of experience developing distributed applications, mostly in the enterprise sector. Particular areas of interest include devops, automation, cloud, concurrency and distributed systems. Prior to joining Cloudsoft, Aled was Chief Architect at Enigmatec Corporation. He holds a PhD (Computer Science) from the University of St Andrews.
Connect with Aled
Alasdair Hodge (Principal Engineer and Solutions Architect at Cloudsoft) is a leadingauthority in cloud, software applications and automation across all major cloud platforms, he has been engaged in the design and optimisation of cloud services in banking and finance and other service-based sectors such as telecoms, electronic design and supply-chain automation for over 12 years.
Connect with Alasdair

About Cloudsoft
Cloudsoft specialise in applications, automation and the cloud. Our top-down, application-centric approach is what sets us apart and empowers our customers to tame their IT estates and drive real business value.

Our public cloud IT transformation expertise is embedded our Tempo cloud services, helping our clients to transform faster and exploit the benefits of cloud. We’re an active contributor to the Apache Brooklyn open source project, an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner with Well-Architected, Microsoft Workloads, DevOps Competencies, a FinOps Foundation Member and a FinOps Certified Service Provider.
Our flagship AMP software is a Digital Platform Conductor, enabling customers in Banking, Defence and other heavily regulated industries to cut through the complexity of their estates. This maximises value from their technology investments, drives down costs and reduces risks. Cloudsoft AMP is the only product which strategically manages applications throughout their lifecycles across hybrid infrastructures, regardless of environment or location.

We're based in Edinburgh, UK, but work with clients around the world.

Yan Cui (aka Twitter's The Burning Monk) is goldmine of knowledge when it comes to Serverless Architectures. But what is Serverless? And where did the inspiration for his Twitter handle come from? Aled and Alasdair spoke to him to find out...
To Yan going Serverless makes "all the sense in the world" and he has been an AWS Service Hero since 2018. With experience spanning e-commerce, streaming, gaming and social media platforms we had plenty to talk about!
What kinds of applications are suited to serverless? How do you get started? And why should you consider adopting a serverless architecture? These questions, and more, answered in this week's podcast!
Learn more about Serverless on AWS here.
Connect with Yan Cui here, read his blog here and find out more about his Production-Ready Serverless workshops here.
About the hosts
Aled Sage (VP Engineering at Cloudsoft) brings 20 years of experience developing distributed applications, mostly in the enterprise sector. Particular areas of interest include devops, automation, cloud, concurrency and distributed systems. Prior to joining Cloudsoft, Aled was Chief Architect at Enigmatec Corporation. He holds a PhD (Computer Science) from the University of St Andrews.
Connect with Aled
Alasdair Hodge (Principal Engineer and Solutions Architect at Cloudsoft) is a leadingauthority in cloud, software applications and automation across all major cloud platforms, he has been engaged in the design and optimisation of cloud services in banking and finance and other service-based sectors such as telecoms, electronic design and supply-chain automation for over 12 years.
Connect with Alasdair

About Cloudsoft

Cloudsoft specialise in applications, automation and the cloud. Our top-down, application-centric approach is what sets us apart and empowers our customers to tame their IT estates and drive real business value.

Our public cloud IT transformation expertise is embedded our Tempo cloud services, helping our clients to transform faster and exploit the benefits of cloud. We’re an active contributor to the Apache Brooklyn open source project, an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner with Well-Architected, Microsoft Workloads, DevOps Competencies, a FinOps Foundation Member and a FinOps Certified Service Provider.
Our flagship AMP software is a Digital Platform Conductor, enabling customers in Banking, Defence and other heavily regulated industries to cut through the complexity of their estates. This maximises value from their technology investments, drives down costs and reduces risks. Cloudsoft AMP is the only product which strategically manages applications throughout their lifecycles across hybrid infrastructures, regardless of environment or location.

We're based in Edinburgh, UK, but work with clients around the world.

In this month's episode we talk to Kylie Fowler, a leading consultant in the realm of IT and Software Asset Management, enabling companies to optimise their IT estate through best practice and maximise their investments in tech. Connect with Kylie on LinkedIn.
Joining Alasdair is Cloudsoft's Vicky Glynn, who spoke alongside Kylie at the DIGIT Cloud First conference in June 2021. We wanted to continue the conversation around Cloud's promise of simplicity and the complex, hybrid technology world most organisations actually inhabit.
Kylie, Vicky and Alasdair delve into this complex reality, and talk about how organisations can use new tactics like composability, alongside more traditional asset management strategies, to get their disparate technologies singing in harmony.
About the hosts
Alasdair Hodge (Principal Engineer and Solutions Architect at Cloudsoft) is a leadingauthority in cloud, software applications and automation across all major cloud platforms, he has been engaged in the design and optimisation of cloud services in banking and finance and other service-based sectors such as telecoms, electronic design and supply-chain automation for over 12 years.
Connect with Alasdair

Vicky Glynn (Head of Strategic Growth, Cloudsoft) has spent 20 years driving success for customers with large and complex IT estates, specialising in regulated industries. She is passionate about the benefits cloud and infrastructure solutions can bring, and on delivering technology solutions and services, in a no nonsense way, that help customers grow and innovate, ensuring they remain competitive and resilient in an increasingly complex market.Connect with Vicky

About Cloudsoft
Cloudsoft specialise in applications, automation and the cloud. Our top-down, application-centric approach is what sets us apart and empowers our customers to tame their IT estates and drive real business value.

Our public cloud IT transformation expertise is embedded our Tempo cloud services, helping our clients to transform faster and exploit the benefits of cloud. We’re an active contributor to the Apache Brooklyn open source project, an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner with Well-Architected, Microsoft Workloads, DevOps Competencies, a FinOps Foundation Member and a FinOps Certified Service Provider.
Our flagship AMP software is a Digital Platform Conductor, enabling customers in Banking, Defence and other heavily regulated industries to cut through the complexity of their estates. This maximises value from their technology investments, drives down costs and reduces risks. Cloudsoft AMP is the only product which strategically manages applications throughout their lifecycles across hybrid infrastructures, regardless of environment or location.

We're based in Edinburgh, UK, but work with clients around the world.