Executive Summary
As an Internal Service Fund (ISF), the State of Utah Division of Technology Services (DTS) manages executive branch public cloud expenses upfront, utilizing an allocation and charge-back model for state agencies. Failures in previous bill-back processes compromised Utah’s ability to precisely allocate costs, causing a lack of confidence in cloud financial reporting across the state. By implementing IBM Cloudability and integrating core FinOps principles, DTS transformed a manual, error-prone billing process into a proactive, automated system. This overhaul eliminated hundreds of thousands of dollars in previously unallocated monthly costs, definitively established a single source of truth for cloud financial oversight, and restored trust among state agencies and stakeholders. For this project, the team relied on FinOps principles, a collaborative practice that brings technology, finance, and business teams together to manage and optimize computing bills, ensuring they get the most value out of every dollar spent.
