BIS currently employs a federated IT model with central IT providing core infrastructure, platforms and applications. The departments that consume these resources are not charged for their consumption, the associated cost is paid from the IT infrastructure CAPEX budget. In-line with the “Innovation 2025” strategy, BIS is reconstructing its IT landscape towards a more cloud focused design. The public cloud adoption brings financial and technological changes. It forces the organization to rethink current accounting principles and IT operations procedures.

To gain a comprehensive understanding of the BIS's IT infrastructure and service delivery practices, interviews were conducted with individuals from various IT departments. Additionally, the head of finance operations was interviewed to gather information about the bank's financial processes. To supplement these findings, internal documents related to cost accounting and governance were reviewed. Furthermore, interviews were held with organizations in comparable industries and relevant literature was studied to provide a broader perspective on the topic.

Internal research has shown that the questioned departments are not aware of internal budget discussions regarding cloud computing. Since IT infrastructure pays for resources, there is a general lack of awareness regarding cloud cost and optimization. Reference cases have shown that other organizations face the same challenges when moving to the cloud. Depending on cloud maturity, these organizations applied frameworks like Total Cost of Operation (TCO) and Technology Business Management (TBM) to mitigate cloud adoption challenges. To prevent cost explosion and combat uncontrolled shadow spend, cost transparency and visibility must be established. This can be achieved by introducing TCO and proper service management practices. To limit impact of cloud adoption cost, project costs can be transferred to departments by using a distribution key. The TBM taxonomy can be adopted to get a fit-for-purpose accounting module that connects IT spending to business value. General cloud awareness needs to be raised within the organization.