Customer Overview
Founded in 1954, Village Roadshow is one of Australia’s most iconic entertainment companies, home to leading brands such as Village Cinemas, Village Roadshow Theme Parks, Roadshow Films, and Village Roadshow Studios. Driven by a commitment to delivering exceptional and seamless digital experiences, the company embraces modernisation and harnesses the power of cloud technologies to innovate at speed, enhance operational agility, and continually elevate the customer experience.
The Challenge
Although Village Roadshow had built a lean, previously optimised multi-cloud environment, the lack of clear visibility and governance made it challenging to track, report, and manage cloud spend effectively. Without executive-level reporting or insight into cost trends, the IT team found it difficult to optimise workloads or align spending with leadership’s budget expectations.
Internal resources, already focused on modernisation and enhancing user experiences, simply didn’t have the bandwidth or specialist expertise to drive advanced cloud financial management. Compounding these challenges, legacy infrastructure remained in place that was misaligned with best practices, introducing inefficiencies and leaving valuable optimisation opportunities untapped.
“We had poor governance and visibility of our overall cloud spend. There was no way to provide executive reporting or highlight trends. Budgeting cloud spend was a nightmare.”
Chris Georgoulas, General Manager, Technology Operations, Village Roadshow
The Solution
Referred by AWS to perform a Cloud Financial Management Maturity Assessment workshop, Village Roadshow engaged Cloudec to operate as their FinOps practice, providing ongoing support, enablement, and integration with their existing cloud cost management tool. The engagement included:
- A comprehensive cost and usage assessment
- A strategic roadmap to strengthen governance and reporting
- Ongoing FinOps Managed Services
- Regular alerts, trend analysis, and executive-ready reporting
- Monthly governance meetings to review spend and uncover new savings opportunities
“Cloudec gives us real time insights into cloud consumption, and alerts us when there is any anomalous activity in our environments so that our cloud spend is managed and doesn’t spiral out of control.”
Chris Georgoulas, General Manager, Technology Operations, Village Roadshow
Outcome & Results
- $800,000/year saved in cloud spend, equating to a 20% year-on-year reduction.
- Achieved budget targets set by the board, supporting the wider IT cost reduction goals.
- Significant resource savings, as Cloudec now produces key cloud cost reports.
- Faster anomaly detection through real time insights and alerts.
- Better budgeting and forecasting accuracy, enabling smarter investment decisions.
- Enhanced collaboration across engineering, finance, and IT with clear accountability and visibility.
“It used to take me a whole day to do reporting. We had a spreadsheet with however many tabs and needed to gather data manually from our cloud platforms to input into that. Now, it’s a half-hour session and we know exactly where we stand.”
“Cloudec doesn’t feel like a managed service – they’re an extension of our team.”
Chris Georgoulas, General Manager, Technology Operations, Village Roadshow
Quantifiable Results (Pull-Outs)
- 800K+ Annual Cloud Cost Reduction
- 20% YoY Cloud Spend Savings
- Full Cloud Spend Visibility for Executives
- Legacy Resource Optimisation
- Accurate Forecasting & Budgeting
- Time Savings for Internal Team
