Recently, I and other members of the PointFive team had the opportunity to attend the FinOps X conference in beautiful Barcelona. Not only was this a great way to speak with members of the FinOps community and learn about the latest innovations and happenings in the space, but it was also a chance to discuss my own FinOps experience firsthand.
I presented with Mike Rosenberg, Senior Director of Engineering at our customer Nubank, to talk about maximizing cloud investments by inspiring accountability with engineers.
PointFive empowered the Nubank team’s engineers to take better control over their cloud cost efficiency. In fact, by leveraging PointFive’s platform, Nubank engineers were better able to understand their cloud cost inefficiencies and to solve them faster with more confidence than ever before. So what were their problems, and how did PointFive help solve them? Let’s dive in.
Nubank is the world’s largest digital banking platform outside of Asia. It serves more than 100 million customers worldwide and leverages data and proprietary technology to develop innovative financial products and services.
With this depth of technology, however, cloud cost inefficiencies are inevitable. In examining their operations, the Nubank team identified several gaps they needed to fill:
Nubank pursued cost optimization opportunities through its cloud providers to help close the gap between where they were and where they wanted to be, and it helped, at first.
But it wasn’t enough. This is where PointFive came in.
We took Nubank’s saving opportunities and translated them into language that engineers actually understand. Armed with better comprehension and visibility into these challenges, the team felt empowered to take ownership of their cloud resources and take action. So how, exactly, did we make this happen?
PointFive developed a linear process framework, where each step builds upon the previous one. While theoretical in nature, it focuses on four key priorities:
We'd like to share two examples of the application of this framework - in S3 Buckets and DynamoDB.
Nubank needed to optimize its Amazon S3 buckets, so we created a prioritized list of all related inefficiencies. Then, we tackled the basic, easier problems before diving into deeper inefficiencies.
At that point, our DeepWaste™ Detection technology provided us with insight and visibility into hygiene issues within Nubank’s scale, which highlighted a greater issue around standardization, for example: buckets with missing Intelligent-Tiering. DeepWaste Detection also allowed Nubank engineers to better engage with problems relevant to them, and to jump in and solve those problems through PointFive’s Jira integration, which allowed easy ticketing from within the platform.
Our ongoing monitoring of these buckets then illuminated a deeper problem: Delayed Transition of Objects to Intelligent-Tiering in S3, incurred higher fees that could be avoided with immediate placement into Intelligent-Tiering. The depth of this diagnosis inspired confidence for engineers to interact with PointFive; this is a highly technical subject, and relevant to their everyday work.
PointFive provided meaningful context on the buckets tiering architecture that gave the engineers the confidence in our analysis. Plus, we provided detailed remediation steps to make it easier for the engineers to implement.
Previously, Nubank had very little visibility into its DynamoDB inefficiencies. Because of the time and constraints involved in gaining that type of insight, it would’ve been a resource-consuming project for the internal team to handle.
PointFive worked to answer all of the Nubank engineers’ questions about the logic behind our technology, which helped bolster their confidence in our platform. Once again, that offered observability into DynamoDB expenses. This level of insight allowed Nubank’s leadership and engineers to justify the cost of our product and services.
The combination of resource attribution, direct access to findings, simple remediation flow, and the ability to allow fixes within existing platforms enabled Nubank engineers to consistently take action. Easily finding the resources and opportunities that actually matter supports better ownership of cloud costs.
Our detailed, actionable insights and recommendations for CloudFront, coupled with the ongoing optimization of S3, DynamoDB, and other services, enable effective cost reduction. With bi-directional, Jira-enabled workflows, Nubank can streamline resource management, allowing them to allocate investments toward high-priority, high-impact projects.
I look at our approach as having three key benefits to Nubank.
Operationally, we helped allow centralized tracking, open Jira cards, and group issues into a single remediation project.
Technically, we provided visibility into deep, hard-to-find opportunities alongside detailed remediation instructions. That level of specificity is one of our platform's major value adds.
From a business perspective, we not only helped the Nubank engineers do the cloud waste math but also helped the company save money, promote accountability, and drive engagement with those teams.
Basically, we set them up for long-term success.
Our ability to dive deep while meeting engineers where they are — using the language they truly understand — gets them engaged and fosters a culture of ownership and action. This makes a significant difference in an organization’s ability to streamline operations and better use cloud investments.
With PointFive, Nubank knows it’s getting the most out of its cloud environment and its engineering teams. We hope to do the same thing for organizations everywhere, and we can’t wait to share that ability with other customers.
Book a demo to see how PointFive empowers your engineers to help you maximize your cloud investments.
