The Challenge: Runaway Cloud Costs & Low Visibility
At Market Force Information, global infrastructure across the US, Canada, and Europe suffered from significant "cloud sprawl". Azure monthly expenditures had reached $124K, with limited governance over resource utilization or service visibility. Simultaneously, the organization's ITSM intake was fragmented, leading to missed requests and inconsistent service delivery.
The Strategy: Rightsizing and Service Transformation
As Director of Infrastructure, I executed a dual-track strategy to stabilize costs and professionalize service operations.
1. Workload Rationalization & FinOps
I directed a comprehensive Azure modernization initiative focused on:
- Environment Tuning: Eliminating underutilized assets and orphan resources.
- Resource Scheduling: Automating uptime/downtime cycles for non-production environments to prevent idle waste.
- Capacity Rightsizing: Aligning VM instances with actual workload demand rather than peak-theoretical needs.
2. ITSM Redesign (Jira Service Management)
To improve service quality, I led the full relaunch of Jira Service Management. This involved redefining ticket categorization, escalation paths, and automated intake workflows to ensure every issue was captured and measured.
The Results: Sustained Efficiency
The modernization efforts aligned cloud spend with architectural requirements while drastically improving the user experience.
- Drastic Cost Takeout: Reduced monthly Azure spend from $124K to $69K, achieving $660K+ in annualized savings.
- Service Transparency: Increased measurable ticket capture by 94% through improved intake discipline.
- User Satisfaction: Boosted customer satisfaction scores from 3.2 to 4.6 (out of 5.0).
- Culture of Performance: Introduced the organization's first formalized performance management process using SMART goal frameworks.