About Strategic Blue Origin Story

Trading cloud like a commodity

Dr. James Mitchell, a former commodities trader, founded Strategic Blue in 2010, alongside his former boss at Morgan Stanley, John Woodley. They realized that price risk management, with or without financial intermediation, could be applied to cloud, treating it like a commodity.

The original FinOps company

In 2010, AWS was still new, many CTOs had not yet heard of cloud computing, and the term “FinOps” had yet to be coined. AWS had aspirations to service all organizations, large and small, so needed to standardize how it sold to customers with very different purchasing needs.

Strategic Blue started life “financially intermediating” between AWS’ need to sell in a standard way, and customers’ desire to buy in ways that suited them. We called this Advanced Resale, becoming the original FinOps company, and we still offer this today, particularly to Public Sector organizations that need it.

rate optimization specialism

Rate optimization specialism

EC2 continues to make up the bulk of most customers’ AWS bills, and has always been the focus for cost optimization efforts. Cost savings can be made either through more efficient usage, or by accessing a better discount rate.

When AWS introduced the original Reserved Instance, an opportunity opened up for Strategic Blue to specialize in AWS rate optimization, leveraging its founders' backgrounds in commodity price risk management. AWS soon introduced different types of Reserved Instances, with different types of embedded financial optionality, as well as an RI Marketplace.

AWS also introduced different prepayment options with different discounts. Later they introduced Savings Plans, which complement RIs through an option to apply discounts to other compute services, such as Lambda & Fargate. Customers crave simplicity, but complexity drives superior returns and lower risk, as every good commodity trader knows.

Strategic Blue strives to deliver its customers the best of all worlds: a simple engagement, with superior savings, while retaining maximum flexibility to make technical changes without notice and without paying a penalty.

rate optimization

Cloud as a force for good

As with all new technology, the intent is to use it for the betterment of society. Public cloud excels at this when it democratizes access to scalable, self-service computation for short-periods. This should be at a low price point achievable only due to the benefits of time-sharing a finite amount of a perishable commodity - i.e. cloud capacity.

At Strategic Blue, we care deeply about the world we live in, and believe that cloud can benefit society, particularly when used efficiently, and for worthwhile use cases.

We have a particular passion for supporting digital innovators in science, research, education & healthcare, as they build cloud solutions to tackle the world’s growing list of challenges. Our team will always go the extra mile to give them back time and savings to make their contribution to society.

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Our Mission

Our mission

To optimize cloud pricing, balancing flexibility and cost for digital innovators.

our vision

Our vision

A future where leading-edge cloud solutions compete in an accessible & vibrant market, scaling innovation to tackle the world’s challenges at an affordable price.

Our experts

Meet some of our expert team members and learn more about their specific job roles.

Be part of our future

We have exciting plans for the future. We are always looking for amazing people to join our friendly team.

Discover your savings potential

Our Savings Review gives you a free, evidence-based report into the savings and flexibility your current cost optimization approach delivers. It provides insights into the extra value we could bring with our professional rate optimization.