DATA ENRICHMENT EXPLAINED

Simply put, Data Enrichment is the process of taking a dataset, like your cloud bill, and layering in new dimensions that matter to your business. By using an Enriched Bill, your existing FinOps reporting tools can surface new trends and answer the questions that matter to anyone making strategic decisions.

THE PROBLEM

There are some questions that cannot be answered by looking at your cloud bill:

I see a recent cost spike on these shared resources. Which teams are responsible?

We're setting prices for our biggest customer. How much does it cost to serve them?

We need to fix our margins. What's the unit cost for each product, across the full stack?

Obviously, once you can answer these questions you're able to contribute to decisions at the highest levels of your business. But, traditionally, they're either impossible to answer, or at least extremely difficult. Companies that have tried to do it manually run into one or more of the following issues:

Their engineering velocity takes a major hit
Optimization initiatives get increasingly complex
Cross-team friction ramps up as they try to get engineers to "take action"

For example, you could task your engineers with re-architecting their software so that each team's spend is totally isolated from the others. Beyond the technical limitations of such an approach, you'd better expect to run into some serious pushback when people realize the velocity they're being asked to sacrifice.

Alternatively, you could create your own manual process, which is basically doing Data Enrichment by spreadsheet. But now your team needs to invest in a time-consuming setup, and then commit to long-term manual tracking and communication to maintain coverage as your systems evolve.

These challenges limit the impact your FinOps team can have beyond straightforward cost cutting.

Standard Bill:

Enriched Bill:

Curious about how it's possible to get this previously unavailable billing granularity? You can dive deeper into exactly how this works under the covers, in our blog post, Data Enrichment In Practice.

THE SOLUTION

For your FinOps team to become fully integrated into your business, it simply needs better data. We provide the tooling for your technical teams to take ownership of their spend, and slice it along new lines that make sense to your business - like customer, product line and cost center.

Our simple three-step process doesn't require any changes to your cloud architecture, which means your engineering team can spend more time building for your customers, and less time conforming to the CSPs billing model.

Learn how it works

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Here at CloudBurst, we live and breathe cloud billing data. But we understand that Data Enrichment Platforms are on the cutting edge of the FinOps industry, so we're always happy to hop on a call with you to describe how it works in more detail.

If you have any questions about what a Data Enrichment Platform is, how to get started, or exactly how we can help your FinOps team create more business value than ever before, simply click the button below to schedule a conversation.

Schedule a chat with us!