1 of 23

Who Am I?

2 of 23

Who Am I?

3 of 23

Kion:

A Penn State Journey

4 of 23

Budget Enforcement

Continuous Compliance

​

Automation and Orchestration

​

Resource Optimization

5 of 23

Hello,

Is It Me You’re Looking For?

6 of 23

Why Lionel Richie?

Why Kion Richie?

el

7 of 23

The PSU Journey!!

8 of 23

The Backstory

#%@$&!@*!!

9 of 23

What About Bob?

10 of 23

Flynn, Bob

March 22, 2021

Flynn, Bob

03/22/21 11:01 AM

Yo Rick!

03/22/21 11:02 AM

What’s up, dude?

Flynn, Bob

03/22/21 11:03 AM

How’s my favorite Higher Ed Cloud rockstar doing?

03/22/21 11:02 AM

I’m on vacation!

Flynn, Bob

03/22/21 11:03 AM

Did you ever hear of CloudTamer? I just saw a demo and asked them for some contacts at schools that were using it and it will surely shock you to learn that The Pennsylvania State University was one of CloudTamer’s customers.

11 of 23

Let’s Do Some Demo!!

  • Applied Research Laboratory (ARL)
    • Department of Defense (DoD) designated University Affiliated Research Center (UARC)

​

  • Two Kion Demos
    • General
    • Security and Compliance

12 of 23

Guided Evaluation Process

    • Install
    • Configure
    • In Our Environment
    • 4 Weeks
    • 60-Day License

​

Penn State Evaluation

13 of 23

Give Me My Billing Data!

AWS

Billing

Conductor

EBC?

ABC?

SMH….

14 of 23

September 2021

The Wait Begins….

February 2022

Cloud Audit

Other Approvals

  • February 2022
  • 13 Findings
    • Valid Findings
    • Silly Errors
    • Things We Couldn’t Control
  • Kion?
    • Customer Access – Least Privilege

Received Quote

Recommendation

  • Security
  • Accessibility
  • Contract

15 of 23

Purchase and Implementation

  • Approved For a Smaller Purchase
    • March 2022
    • Unused Year-End Money
  • Smaller Footprint For Service Development

​

16 of 23

Early Adopters

  • May 2022
    • Shutdown of #%@$&!@*!!
    • Happy Birthday
  • Notifications To Those Who Recently Used #%@$&!@*!!
    • 30 Total
    • Early Adopter Request Form
  • 5 Early Adopters
    • Onboarded in July 2022

​

Issues?

    • Access/Role Challenges
    • Financial Model
    • AWS Billing Data
    • Reporting

​

17 of 23

    • May 2022
    • PSU - Sponsor
      • Contract and Legal
      • Business Model
      • Accessibility
      • Security
      • Functional

​

Kion Service Evaluation

Yo, Rick!

18 of 23

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

  • Overall Support
  • Documentation
  • SaaS…But Not SaaS
  • Public API
  • Providing Platform For Automation
  • Compliance Frameworks
  • Great Responses To Feature Requests
    • Inventory
    • Budgets
    • ServiceNow Integration
  • Application Design – Update Process
  • Cloud Front Door
  • Labels
  • I2 Service Eval

The Good

19 of 23

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

  • SaaS…But Not SaaS
  • Pricing Discrepancies
  • Compliance Frameworks
    • Finding Agreement With Security Office
    • Parity Across Providers
  • Great Responses From Kion….But….
    • Inventory
    • Budgets
    • ServiceNow Integration
  • Access/Role Challenges
  • Naming
    • Rules/Roles
    • PSU Naming

​

​

​

​

​

​

The Bad

20 of 23

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

  • ServiceNow Woes
  • Azure Provisioning
  • Azure Role Deletion
  • Public vs. Private API
  • Utilize The Software

​

​

​

The Ugly

21 of 23

Match Made in Heaven?

  • Full Rollout
  • FinOps
    • Savings Opportunities
    • Generate Billing File?
    • Finance Teams Access
  • ServiceNow
  • Slow Down!!
  • I2 Kion Service Advisory Board

​

​

​

22 of 23

Questions?

23 of 23