About Vibrent Health
Vibrent Health was founded in 2009 to address a distinct gap in the healthcare industry and to offer digital health technology and research tools to health organizations, researchers, and research participants. Today, the company is a market-leading enterprise providing a large-scale versatile global platform for health research with its Digital Health Solutions Platform. The platform facilitates data collection from a broad range of sources including genomics, environment, lifestyle, behaviors, and electronic health records. Since 2017, Vibrent Health has been a key partner in the National Institutes of Health’s All of US Research Program, which aims to collect health data from over one million people to support a wide variety of research studies.
“We’ve discovered that Finout can help wherever you are in the Finops journey - as you progress in your journey, Finout provides the right tools at the right time.”
Dean Heistad | VP Technology Operations
Vibrent Healths FinOps challenge
Since winning a prestigious National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant in 2017, Vibrent Health has seen tremendous and rapid growth in their business and in the corresponding cloud usage. While they initially used simple static Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, the company found themselves making a swift change to Kubernetes. An increase in cloud accounts and cloud providers resulted in high costs with no clear picture of what was driving the costs or the most efficient way to reduce them.
“We didn’t know what we needed to know, and as a result, we chose the wrong solutions. Finout was the fourth iteration of a cloud cost optimization solution. ”
Dean Heistad | VP Technology Operations
The Vibrent Health team recognized their need for a cloud cost solution, yet found it challenging to pinpoint the exact questions that needed addressing to find the right fit. They initially opted for open-source solutions, only to later recognize the necessity of a comprehensive platform. With each new solution they tested, they discovered limitations, particularly in terms of observability, that left them still in search of the ideal tool.
One of the biggest frustrations was the added cost of the solutions - instead of helping Vibrent Health optimize their costs and save money, they were actually requiring them to spend more.
“The more money we spent, the more money the cloud cost solutions made and the unhappier we were on all fronts.”
Dean Heistad | VP Technology Operations
The team was in search of a dynamic solution that would evolve along with their needs, offering insights into the most beneficial features as their business and cloud utilization expand.
Why Finout?
“We finally found Finout and said - wow, these guys’ goals are aligned exactly with ours. Not to mention their great Kubernetes solution and integration with other cloud resources we use.”
Dean Heistad | VP Technology Operations
Vibrent Health aimed to deliver precise cost accounting and observability to various teams, recognizing the significant impact that decisions made by QA and development teams have on financial outcomes. Their objective was to provide senior management with a transparent view of cost origins, thereby facilitating more informed decision-making processes.
The team was initially drawn to Finout because of the Virtual Tagging and cost accountability features, as well as how easily it integrated with Kubernetes. These features enabled them to start tracking their cloud costs more effectively and gain much-needed insight into how much they were spending and why.
As the company progresses, it is actively seeking the most efficient strategies for operation and growth in line with customer demands. Based on past experiences, the team understands the dynamic nature of their needs, anticipating the relevancy for enhanced features and capabilities in the future. Finout emerged as the optimal choice, not only meeting their current requirements but also demonstrating a commitment to evolving its offerings by continuously introducing new features and capabilities.
In addition, Finout customer support is extremely responsive and operates as a true partner, willing to provide customized solutions. For example, Vibrent Health uncovered a need for a specific budgeting feature that didn’t exist in Finout. A quick call to customer support resulted in the feature being added as fast as possible.
“When Finout didn’t have the exact budgeting piece we needed, we talked to them and they said, ‘you’re right, that’s a gap.’ And then they created it and made the solution better. We loved that - that’s a real collaborative partnership.”
Dean Heistad | VP Technology Operations
The results of onboarding Finout’s cloud observability platform
“We’ve been in a partnership with Finout for 10 months now and we’ve seen growth and evolution in the Finout platform and capabilities that are exactly what we need.”
Dean Heistad | VP Technology Operations
As a result of working with Finout, Vibrent Health has reduced their monthly cloud cost bill by 43%, and they are optimistic that the ongoing use of Finout will yield even more savings.
By leveraging the Virtual Tagging feature, Vibrant Health achieved cost accountability, a crucial milestone in their journey toward greater efficiency.
In addition, the entire technological team is able to focus on their area of expertise - building and running a health research platform - while keeping costs under control without having to become financial experts themselves.
“I don’t need people in the company to know about cloud cost optimization if I have Finout to do that for me.”
Dean Heistad | VP Technology Operations
The bottom line
With the help of Finout, Vibrent Health is able to take their business to the next level. They can continue to rely on the multiple cloud service providers that support their work with the peace of mind that Finout will be working in the background to monitor costs and help ensure that the company can operate at peak efficiency.
“As we grow and are happy with Finout as a vendor, we are going to stay here forever and keep renewing this partnership.”
Dean Heistad | VP Technology Operations
