­Join us on 10th April, 7 PM at The Westin, Kuala Lumpur for a special CxO dinner where we gather industry leaders like yourself to connect and explore how cloud and AI are shaping the future of financial services.

Gain Expert Insights On

• Enhancing Account Management: Harness AI/ML and advanced analytics to perform sophisticated risk analysis and make AI-powered investment decisions
• Accelerating Innovation to Launch New Services: Drive new capabilities in areas like portfolio recommendations, digital assets, ESG scoring, and building new investable assets
• Navigating Compliance with Automation Strategy: Generate alpha, improve credit decisioning and support KYC verification and fraud detection
• Fuelling Hyper-personalized CX: Provide frictionless cross-channel customer experiences and deliver value-added solutions at customers’ point of need

Enjoy an engaging discussion over a delightful meal, connect with like-minded professionals, and gain exclusive insights on the next wave of financial services innovation.

Plus, eligible attendees can access exclusive offers.

The post CxO Dinner:<br> Redefine The Future of Finance With Cloud & AI Innovation appeared first on Cloud Kinetics.

The organization maintained a robust on-premises IT infrastructure distributed across two data centres, balancing homegrown and legacy applications. To optimize operational efficiency and ensure reliability,  they hosted their environment in a colocation data centre. Despite grappling with legacy systems, the customer remained proactive in continuous technology refresh cycles to stay abreast of evolving industry standards.

As part of its commitment to offering the best of the best in services and solutions, the organization had lined up a shift from its traditional on-premises IT infrastructure to one that would leverage the public cloud and usher in a phase of digital transformation. With recent acquisitions of several regional fintech companies and strategic partnerships with other fintech platforms in the works, they would benefit from the business agility, data visualization and analytics capabilities, and the quicker go-to-market that a modern backbone would bring. And so began the search for the right partner for this cloud journey.

The post Modernizing Legacy: The Digital Transformation Of A Credit Agency appeared first on Cloud Kinetics.

Recognizing this as an opportunity to optimize their digital transformation journey in step with their business goals, Lightstorm turned to Cloud Kinetics.

The post Streamlining Operations & Optimizing Cloud Costs: Lightstorm’s Success Story appeared first on Cloud Kinetics.

With over 35 years of pioneering experience in sustainable solar manufacturing, the customer’s legacy is one of environmental responsibility and forward-thinking innovation. This rich history has earned the company multiple prestigious awards, cementing its position as a leader in cutting-edge solar technology.

The post Cloud Migration To AWS & Automation For A Solar Manufacturing Company appeared first on Cloud Kinetics.

Based on inputs from Cloud Kinetics FinOps team  

Operating in the cloud promises a boost to agility, innovation, time to market and more. But if you don’t have the centralized coordination and collaborative approach that FinOps brings, you could be wasting millions in cloud spends every year!

For many organizations, investments in cloud spend run into the billions every year as they tap into the agility, reliability, and flexibility that the cloud offers. With the sudden increase in cloud investment has come the problem of excessive and wasteful spending. If your organization is on the verge of implementing FinOps but you’re unsure of what it entails or have cloud spending related concerns, answers to these top 5 most common questions on cloud costs should clear things up.

Over 30% of cloud spend is reported to be wasted every year. This number is projected to hit $30 billion by the end of the year.

Implementing FinOps – cloud financial management practices designed to maximize business value – is the most effective way for organizations to gain better control on cloud spend, avoid waste and keep projects running efficiently without compromising on end results. Here are some of the most common questions and concerns our customers, stakeholders and decision-makers have before embarking on a FinOps journey.

Our in-house experts at Cloud Kinetics, led by FinOps Managed Services Director Aubrey Bent, provide insight and pointers based on their extensive experience working with a global client base.

1. What is the best way to kickstart FinOps practices in my organization?

When it comes to FinOps, one step at a time works better than a big-bang approach. Implement the approach in small incremental steps, allowing the organization to fully understand and slowly settle into the new approach. Here’s a roadmap:

• Get senior stakeholder management support and sponsorship.
  Identify pain points like cloud costs, cost overruns or lack of cost visibility and define the goals right from the team composition to the operating model and milestones for the first phase. For instance, you may need to make decisions on things like whether a FinOps centre of excellence team is being set up.
• Create a FinOps roadmap/plan to define the future state.
  This should include an operating model to clearly define what the FinOps team will be doing. A Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed (RACI) model will have to be created explaining what each person’s roles and responsibilities are and identify KPIs to measure the FinOps function and performance of business and application teams.
• Prepare an engagement plan.
  This will help show how you will engage and collaborate with your finance, business, engineering and procurement teams.
• Create an ongoing review plan.
  After about 3-6 months, gradually move onto the next phase where you can implement your KPIs, do some more dashboards for creating useful cost optimization reports, and bring automation in as well. The system will evolve over time and you will get better results.

2. How important is training to FinOps success?

Training and education is paramount to the successful implementation of FinOps. It’s also where the entire exercise can fail.
Get internal teams – such as the business and app teams – together. Conduct these 4 training activities on an ongoing basis.

• Kickoff meeting
• Brownbag sessions to educate teams on the FinOps Framework and tooling
• Implementation of recommended actions, ensuring teams are doing these regularly to achieve cost savings.
• Monthly or quarterly scorecards to measure performance and optimization every month.

Repeat these actions month on month till it becomes part of the team’s DNA – if they don’t do it on a regular basis, FinOps cannot be successful.

3. How do we effectively measure FinOps results – any metrics to look at?

• You can define several measurable parameters. For instance, Reserved Instance or Savings Plan Coverage must be >80% every month. Another metric could be that after 30 days of idle instance, you stop or decommission your instance.
• You could track accountability and enablement with a metric like Cloud Enablement %, the number of business leaders trained and certified / the total number of business leaders in the organization as a percentage.
• The Cost Optimization Realized Savings % measures the ratio of total cloud services optimized to total cloud services optimizable. This brings attention to areas for potential cost savings – pricing optimizations like Committed Use Discounts as well as resource optimizations of wasteful resources that haven’t brought/added any business value. The latter could be from over-sized databases, idle instances, etc.
• Annual Forecast Accuracy % is another useful metric that looks at the ratio of actual annual cloud spend vs the forecast cloud spend per annum. The number stabilizes as the gap between actual and forecast narrows, allowing the business to plan better and avoid any unexpected spikes in spends.

4. What are some typical challenges businesses face when managing cloud spend, and what are some best practices to address them?

FinOps to manage cloud spending might sound simple, but there can be some challenges.

The hardest one is to change the ways of working within an organization especially if someone has come from an on-premises world and is also new to cloud. It needs a mindset shift.

Surveys show that 30% of the challenge is getting the DevOps team to do the actions needed to enable FinOps. DevOps teams tend to already be very busy doing development and project work which is their priority and key focus.

Additionally, FinOps can become complex because of the intrinsic need for collaboration and getting the finance team and the procurement teams involved isn’t always straightforward.

The best way to overcome these issues is to educate them and train them on the benefits and value from FinOps, so that all the teams are ready to come on your journey. FinOps is relatively new to the cloud industry and many people do not know about it, so training sessions and brownbag sessions help build cadence with them and smoothen the process.

The next thing is to try and automate these actions as much as possible so that less manual effort is required from them.

5. What are some tools or services that Cloud Kinetics offers that can help businesses better manage their cloud spend?

Cloud Kinetics has best-in-class partnerships with multiple providers/tools in the field, including Apptio and Spot by NetApp. We have extensively utilized Cloudability by Apptio for FinOps in our engagements with customers as we have found that it meets most of our customers requirements – from easy-to-use dashboards and a benchmarking scorecard to insights into right sizing and unused resources.

Cloudability has APIs allowing one to integrate with DataDog, PagerDuty, ServiceNow etc. For example, if you have a workflow or want to put your billing into one central location like ServiceNow it can integrate as well. This tool can store the data for 1-2 years, allowing for forecasting, right sizing recommendations, unlike native tooling which has a limited window for storage of billing data.

That said, at Cloud Kinetics we ensure we always choose the best-fit solutions and tools for your organization based on your requirements and goals.

You can also download the FinOps 101 Handbook HERE

The post Save Money In The Cloud <br>With FinOps: Your Top 5 <br>Cloud Cost Qs Answered appeared first on Cloud Kinetics.

San Francisco, 27 October 2023 – Cloud Kinetics, a leading cloud transformation partner with strong & scalable operations in the Unites States, ANZ and Asia,  has been awarded the 2023 HashiCorp APJ Focus Partner of the Year award.

Cloud Kinetics was recognized for enabling organizations across industries to operate seamlessly by streamlining their cloud infrastructure provisioning, security and networking to achieve unprecedented agility and operational efficiency with HashiCorp’s advanced solutions.

As a HashiCorp Hyper-Specialized System Integrator Partner, Cloud Kinetics is one of the few partners in the region to hold Certified HashiCorp Implementation Partner (CHIP) certifications across HashiCorp’s core products: Terraform, Vault and Consul, with capabilities spanning Infrastructure-as-Code, Cloud Security and Service Networking.

The HashiCorp Partner of the Year awards honor exceptional partners within the HashiCorp Partner Network for their enduring commitment to building integrations for the HashiCorp suite of multi-cloud infrastructure automation products, which are used by enterprises around the globe. The 2023 HashiCorp Technology Partner Awards award was announced and presented at the HashiConf conference in San Francisco.

Thousands of companies use HashiCorp to provision, secure, connect, and run cloud infrastructure for their most important applications. Cloud Kinetics is a key ecosystem partner, and we are thrilled to recognize their contribution with the HashiCorp APJ Focus Partner of the Year. I am excited to continue our collaboration with Cloud Kinetics so that together, we can help our customers realize the full value of our combined solutions.Leon Jones, VP, Worldwide Partner Ecosystem, HashiCorp

The HashiCorp Focus Partner of the Year award comes on the heels of Cloud Kinetics’ recent recognition as the first partner in the ASEAN, South Asia and Oceania regions to earn the HashiCorp Infrastructure Competency. Cloud Kinetics’ multi-cloud expertise and technical mastery of HashiCorp technologies have bolstered the infrastructure automation foundation of many organizations – a critical bedrock for modern enterprises seeking to scale and innovate.

We are thrilled to be named the HashiCorp APJ Focus Partner of the Year. This award is a great recognition of the work we are doing with HashiCorp to drive disruptive change for enterprises navigating the shifts in a multi-cloud world. We see our partnership as a critical force multiplier to address complex IT challenges and drive DevOps excellence for businesses of all sizes and industries, and look forward to more fruitful collaborations.Saleh M “Haji” Munshi, Group CEO, Cloud Kinetics

The recent wins mark a significant milestone in Cloud Kinetics’ growth trajectory and stand as notable additions to the company’s expanding portfolio of awards and competencies, including the AWS Rising Star Partner of the Year 2023, AWS DevOps Consulting Competency, as well as the IDG Channel Asia Cloud Innovation Partner award twice in a row. Building upon its achievements and customer success with multinational corporations, Cloud Kinetics will continue to help empower more small and medium-sized businesses and public sector organizations to harness automation as a strategic imperative to thrive in a digital-first era.

With a global presence in 8 countries, Cloud Kinetics is uniquely positioned to serve the dynamic needs of each local market. As part of its ongoing growth strategy, Cloud Kinetics will be making firmer strides in USA and Australia as well as expanding into Thailand in Asia to better empower enterprise clients in the regions to accelerate their digital transformation journey.

The post Cloud Kinetics Recognized as HashiCorp APJ Focus Partner of the Year appeared first on Cloud Kinetics.

We were thrilled by the turnout and participation at this exclusive session hosted by AWS, HashiCorp and Cloud Kinetics, where we explored the critical topic of Zero Trust Security Adoption in the Cloud.

As businesses migrate to cloud environments, the conventional approach to security is evolving. The shift from static and perimeter-based security to dynamic and identity-based security is a paradigm we cannot ignore. Zero Trust Security, rooted in the principle of trusting nothing and authenticating everything, is clearly the way forward.

Speakers

Partono Luminto

Sales Director
Cloud Kinetics

Hendra Tanto

Sr. Solutions Engineer
HashiCorp

Fitra Alim

Technical Director
Cloud Kinetics

Highlights of the session

• Participants gained insights into the latest advancements in cloud security strategies
• Sessions focused on best practices for implementing Zero Trust Security in organizations.
• A productive opportunity to network with peers and industry leaders in the cloud security domain

Agenda

• 15.00 – 15.30: Welcome and Registration
• 15.30 – 15.35: Welcome Address by Cloud Kinetics
• 15.35 – 15.55: Zero Trust in Action with Cloud Kinetics: Fitra Alim, Technical Director, Cloud Kinetics
• 15.55 – 16.15: The Pillars of Zero Trust X Vault & Boundary: Hendra Tanto, Sr Solutions Engineer, HashiCorp
• 16.15 – 16.35: Fun Activity / Coffee Break
• 16.35 – 16.55: Managing Secrets Securely: Hendra Tanto, Sr Solutions Engineer, HashiCorp
• 16.55 – 17.15: Managing Your Data Securely: Fitra Alim, Technical Director, Cloud Kinetics
• 17.15 – 17.35: Q&A Session
• 17.35 – 17.40: Closing Speech by Cloud Kinetics 
• 17.40 onwards: Networking & Dinner

We look forward to your presence at  our next knowledge-packed session. Together, let’s explore the future of cloud security through the lens of Zero Trust!

The post HashiCorp Day: Zero Trust Security Adoption appeared first on Cloud Kinetics.

We were thrilled to see the fantastic turnout, engaging discussions and thought-provoking questions that emerged during the session.

Panelists

Key takeaways from the webinar

🔑 Alignment Matters: The collaboration between finance and engineering teams is critical in managing cloud costs effectively. When these teams work hand-in-hand, it drives better financial visibility and accountability.

📊 Data-Driven Decisions: Leveraging data and analytics is essential to making informed decisions about cloud spend. We discussed the importance of tracking and analyzing usage patterns to optimize costs.

💡 Cloud Optimization Strategies: We explored various strategies and best practices for optimizing cloud costs, including rightsizing, reserved instances, and spot instances.

🤝 Effective Communication: Establishing clear communication channels and a common understanding of cloud cost management goals is crucial for success. Bridging the gap between these two teams can lead to cost savings and improved efficiency.

Our heartfelt thanks to our guest speakers and everyone who participated in the webinar. Your active engagement and insightful questions made this event a resounding success!

Finops 101 webinar: Catch the action here

Get in touch with us for a complimentary 30-minute connect with Aubrey Bent to help support your FinOps journey.

The post FinOps 101: Build Partnership Between Finance & Engineering Teams On Cloud Cost Optimization appeared first on Cloud Kinetics.