A look at the bill before anyone promises a number.

Q: Do we have to hire you afterwards?

No. The three possible outcomes are set out under “Three possible assessment outcomes” above, and all three are acceptable. The list is yours either way.

A cost assessment attributes cloud and model spend to the environments, teams and workloads that cause it, then names the reductions somebody would actually be willing to make. It does not open with a saving, because that figure does not exist until the estate has been looked at.

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Before it starts

What has to be in place for this to be worth doing.

Most of the delay in a cost assessment is not analysis. It is waiting for access, for an account list, and for somebody on your side who is allowed to answer a question about a workload.

01Read access to billing data

Cost and usage data at the level of detail your providers expose, for the accounts in scope.

Read access, scoped to cost and usage. Nothing about this work requires the ability to change a resource.

AskWho grants that in your organization?

02An account inventory

Accounts, subscriptions and projects, with an owner against each where one is known.

The gaps in this list are themselves a finding, and we would rather see the real one than a tidied version.

AskIs there a single list?

03The tagging model as it stands

Whatever allocation scheme exists today, including the parts that were abandoned.

We are not grading it. We need to know what the data will support before we promise an attribution.

AskDoes it match what is deployed?

04The commitment inventory

Reservations, savings plans and committed use in force, with their terms and expiry.

This is often held by finance rather than by the platform team, which is itself worth knowing early.

AskWho holds that list?

05A named owner on your side

One person who can answer questions about scope and convene the workload owners.

Without that, the assessment becomes a document rather than a conversation, and documents do not resize anything.

AskWho would that be?

06Agreement on scope

Which providers, which accounts, which environments, and whether model and inference spend is in or out.

Agreed in writing before work starts rather than discovered in the third week.

AskIs model spend in scope?

On access. The assessment reads. It does not need permission to modify a resource, and it will not be given one. Nothing is re-sized, re-committed or turned off during it; if a change follows, it is made by whoever normally makes changes in your estate, through whatever change process you already run.

The shape of it

Five stages, and what each one needs from you.

The stages are sequential because each one depends on the last. The table states what you have to supply, because the common failure mode is an assessment that stalls waiting for an answer nobody was told to prepare.

Stage	What happens	What it needs from you
Access and inventory	Read access established, accounts enumerated, scope confirmed in writing, and the gap between the account list you have and the accounts that are billing you made visible.	Whoever can grant read access, and the account list as it actually stands rather than as it is documented.
Attribution	Spend mapped to environments, teams and workloads against the tagging model that exists. Unattributable spend reported as its own line rather than distributed by a rule that would make the report tidy and the conclusion wrong.	The tagging model, the team structure it is meant to map to, and a decision on how shared cost should be apportioned.
Drivers	Each layer of the bill examined against what drives it: compute sizing and schedules, storage tiers and retention, data transfer, managed data services, cluster utilization, and model routing where it is visible.	Access to utilization data, and someone who can explain why a workload is shaped the way it is when the metrics do not say.
The argument	Candidates put to the teams that own the workloads. Some are accepted, some are refused for reasons that turn out to be good, and both outcomes are recorded with the reason attached.	Time from the workload owners. This is the stage that decides whether the assessment produces a list or a document.
The list	Candidates ordered by how likely the owning team is to accept them, each with a named owner, and the refusals kept on the list with their reasons for the next cycle.	A decision on what happens next, which may be nothing.

On duration. How long this takes depends on how many accounts are in scope, how good the tagging is, and how quickly workload owners can be convened. It is sized against your estate and agreed in writing before work starts. We will not quote a duration on a website for an estate we have not seen.

What the assessment does not do

It reads, attributes and recommends. It changes nothing.

Inference is part of the bill now, so cloud and model spend are read on the same terms. Reporting it apart from cloud makes the total easier to defend and harder to act on.

It does not distribute what it cannot attribute.

Unattributable spend is reported as its own line.

It does not produce a report.

It produces a list with owners. Each candidate names the team that would have to agree to it, because that is what decides whether it ever happens.

Three ways this ends

Where the list goes.

The assessment produces a list you own, and what happens to it is a separate decision taken afterwards with the list already in your hands.

Operate it with us. As part of the wider cost practice.
Act on it yourselves. Use the prioritized list, the attribution and the reasons recorded for each refusal.
Keep the current position. A real finding, and one the assessment is built to be able to reach.

An attribution exercise and a recommendation. It is not a forecast, and no saving figure exists in it until your own bill has been examined. Beyond SOC 2 Type II for Reign Ops, no other certification or accreditation is claimed. How the boundary works → · Regulatory alignment →

Shared responsibility

What we run, what you run.

Agreed in writing before access is granted, so the boundary is a document rather than a discovery.

Who	What they hold
iTmethods	Establishes read access, enumerates the accounts, attributes the spend, examines the drivers, works through the candidates with your workload owners and produces the ordered list.
Your team	Read access, the account inventory, the tagging model, the commitment inventory, a named owner who can convene people, and agreement on scope in writing.

FAQ

How long does it take?

See On duration above: it is sized against your estate and agreed in writing before work starts.

How much will we save?

Unknown until somebody looks, which is the entire premise of this page. Any figure quoted before the estate has been examined is a sales tactic rather than an estimate. One acceptable outcome of the assessment is that your position is already reasonable.

Do we have to hire you afterwards?

No. The three possible outcomes are set out under “Where the list goes” above, and all three are acceptable. The list is yours either way.

What access do you need?

Read access, scoped to cost and usage, plus the account inventory, the tagging model and the commitment inventory. Nothing about this work requires the ability to change a resource, and the scope is agreed in writing before access is granted.

What does it cost?

Pricing is set in the scoping conversation. This site publishes no price list and no tiers, because what we would operate for you is the thing being priced and it is different every time. The scoping call is where that gets answered, and it commits you to nothing.