Strategic Blue

FinOps and Cost Optimisation (Free - Lite Blue)

Multi-cloud hosting, focusing on the financial optimisation (FinOps) of your cloud spend to reduce the cost of your cloud service. Free Financial optimisation of your cloud, finding the maximum savings. Our Finops services allow you to purchase commitments from 3 to 36 months, ensuring maximum savings across all deployed resources.

Features

  • Free financial optimisation service of cloud service
  • Business focused service which is People Powered, not self service
  • Advanced optimisation potential to cover a wide range of resources
  • Proactive monitoring to reduce costs
  • Flexible length commitments from 3 months to 36 months
  • Minimal rights required to provide recommendations
  • Multi-cloud invoicing all in a single place
  • Independent review of Cloud design to cost optimise

Benefits

  • Reduce your cloud costs for free
  • Low risk - Minimal rights required to provide recommendations
  • Higher discounts for commitments than the vendors can provide
  • Greater flexibility for commitments than the vendors can provide
  • Regular updates on industry changes and ways to save money
  • Improve your cloud cost maturity

Pricing

£0 a unit

  • Education pricing available
  • Free trial available

Service documents

Framework

G-Cloud 12

Service ID

9 6 6 0 4 7 0 2 7 4 9 4 5 3 2

Contact

Strategic Blue Steve Old
Telephone: 02038722583
Email: digitalgov@strategic-blue.com

Service scope

Service constraints
No.
System requirements
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Cloud (GCP)

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
Monday - Friday within 24 hours
Weekends - The ticketing system is unmanned until the next working day.
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
Yes
Online ticketing support accessibility
None or don’t know
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
Web chat support
Web chat
Web chat support availability
9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
Web chat support accessibility standard
None or don’t know
How the web chat support is accessible
No issues identified
Web chat accessibility testing
Not tested
Onsite support
No
Support levels
Each organisation is provided with an account manager and access to a Financial Solutions Architect as part of the managed service.
Support from the cloud vendor is expected to be purchased to cover the ongoing technical support.
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
New customers follow an on-boarding process. They receive login details via an email with instructions on how to set up on our portal. If users need any additional support then this is available through our Account managers and/or Solution Architects.
The Cloud vendors provide a range of resources to help customers get started on their services. These include: comprehensive documentation (in multiple formats), introductory videos, hands-on labs and online training.
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
Customers retain ownership of their data throughout the contract, and simply provide access to Strategic Blue to view their cost and usage information.
At the end of the contract that access is revoked by the customer.

Historic billing data is retained to answer tax or invoicing queries, and is available upon request.
End-of-contract process
At the end of the contract the customer can remove Strategic Blue access to the billing information and a final bill will be issued. The customers billing will then be managed directly by the cloud vendor, customer or other supplier. There is no additional off-boarding cost at the end of the contract.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Using the web interface
Strategic Blue provide a managed service and provide a web interface to assist in the onboarding process.
A web based dashboard is provided for free to allow tracking of cloud costs. Other services are provided via your account manager.
Any Technical support is managed by the customer via the cloud vendor web console.
Web interface accessibility standard
None or don’t know
How the web interface is accessible
Accessibility is currently under review.
Web interface accessibility testing
None.
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
An API is provided by the cloud vendors for management of their services.
Strategic Blue do not provide an API.
API automation tools
  • Ansible
  • Chef
  • SaltStack
  • Terraform
  • Puppet
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
Command line interface
Yes
Command line interface compatibility
  • Linux or Unix
  • Windows
  • MacOS
Using the command line interface
The Cloud vendors provide command line interaction for the technical provision and management of services.
Strategic Blue do not provide command line access to its services.

Scaling

Scaling available
Yes
Scaling type
Automatic
Independence of resources
We provide a managed service that generates data which is not linked to the usage amounts of a customer.
We can provide spend alerts to customers if their cloud usage is predicted to be significantly higher than an agreed baseline.
Usage notifications
Yes
Usage reporting
  • Email
  • SMS
  • Other

Analytics

Infrastructure or application metrics
Yes
Metrics types
Other
Other metrics
  • Usage
  • Prices
  • Potential Savings
Reporting types
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

Supplier type
Reseller providing extra features and support
Organisation whose services are being resold
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Other security clearance
Government security clearance
Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
  • United Kingdom
  • European Economic Area (EEA)
  • EU-US Privacy Shield agreement locations
User control over data storage and processing locations
Yes
Datacentre security standards
Managed by a third party
Penetration testing frequency
Less than once a year
Penetration testing approach
Another external penetration testing organisation
Protecting data at rest
Other
Other data at rest protection approach
Cloud vendor provided encryption depending on customer need and vendor.
Data sanitisation process
No
Equipment disposal approach
A third-party destruction service

Backup and recovery

Backup and recovery
Yes
What’s backed up
  • Machine images
  • Files
  • Databases
Backup controls
Backup will be managed by the customers for all configuration and scheduling. The technical process will depend on the cloud vendor used and/or the technology used for backup management.
Backup facilities are provided by all Cloud Vendors

Strategic Blue maintain a backup of the customer billing information for resilience purposes.
Datacentre setup
Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
Scheduling backups
Users schedule backups through a web interface
Backup recovery
Users can recover backups themselves, for example through a web interface

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
  • Private network or public sector network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
  • Bonded fibre optic connections
  • Legacy SSL and TLS (under version 1.2)
Data protection within supplier network
TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
As per cloud vendor.
Approach to resilience
Multiple access zones and multiple regions.
Outage reporting
A dashboard and email alerts are available.

Identity and authentication

User authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google apps)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
Access is restricted by the customer based on their InfoSec needs
Access restriction testing frequency
Less than once a year
Management access authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password
Devices users manage the service through
  • Dedicated device on a segregated network (providers own provision)
  • Dedicated device on a government network (for example PSN)
  • Dedicated device over multiple services or networks
  • Any device but through a bastion host (a bastion host is a server that provides access to a private network from an external network such as the internet)
  • Directly from any device which may also be used for normal business (for example web browsing or viewing external email)

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
You control when users can access audit information
How long user audit data is stored for
User-defined
Access to supplier activity audit information
You control when users can access audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for
User-defined
How long system logs are stored for
User-defined

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
No
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
No
Other security certifications
Yes
Any other security certifications
Cloud Vendors each have a range of security certification

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
No
Security governance approach
Strategic Blue has access to billing data only, and expect security processes and practices to be managed by the customer.
Information security policies and processes
Information security policies are customer driven.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Supplier-defined controls
Configuration and change management approach
It is a customer responsibility.
Vulnerability management type
Undisclosed
Vulnerability management approach
It is a customer responsibility.
Protective monitoring type
Undisclosed
Protective monitoring approach
It is a customer responsibility.
Incident management type
Undisclosed
Incident management approach
It is managed by the customer.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Supplier-defined process

Separation between users

Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart
Yes
Who implements virtualisation
Third-party
Third-party virtualisation provider
AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google
How shared infrastructure is kept separate
Separate accounts, networks and access credentials.

Energy efficiency

Energy-efficient datacentres
No

Pricing

Price
£0 a unit
Discount for educational organisations
Yes
Free trial available
Yes
Description of free trial
Strategic Blue do not charge for this service.
The standard Cloud Vendor costs will apply.

Service documents