company-logo company-logo-mini

Caterpillar case study

Explore how Caterpillar leveraged Cloudaware for FinOps success and cloud governance at scale

1. About Caterpillar

Caterpillar Inc. is the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines, and diesel-electric locomotives. Operating across more than 190 countries, Caterpillar relies heavily on a robust, multi-cloud IT infrastructure to power its digital operations and global services.

2. Challenges

Caterpillar’s IT landscape spans AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, creating complexities in visibility, compliance, and incident management. As cloud usage grew, so did the challenges:

The main issues included: • Lack of centralized visibility across AWS, Azure, and GCP created blind spots and delayed decision-making. • Maintaining regulatory compliance across environments, such as PCI DSS and internal policies, became increasingly complex. • Cost management efforts were hindered by inconsistent tagging and fragmented usage reporting. • Integrating monitoring data from New Relic and aligning it with asset inventory for proactive incident detection was a time-consuming process. • Incident resolution processes lacked consistency due to disconnected tools, particularly across PagerDuty and internal systems. • SCCM asset data remained siloed from cloud configuration data, hampering holistic infrastructure management.

3. Solutions

Caterpillar implemented the following Cloudaware modules to address its challenges:

• Cloudaware CMDB: Provided a unified inventory of cloud assets across AWS, Azure, and GCP, integrating data from SCCM and cloud APIs. coca cola cmdb • Cloudaware FinOps: Enabled cost visibility across cloud accounts, helping identify underutilized resources and tagging gaps for cost savings. • Cloudaware IT compliance: Enforced over 450 pre-built policies and allowed customization for internal standards, driving continuous compliance monitoring across all environments. coca cola compliance engine • New Relic integration: Correlated monitoring alerts with CMDB records, improving root-cause analysis and performance insights. • PagerDuty integration: Synced incident alerts with Cloudaware CMDB, improving incident routing and shortening time-to-resolution. • SCCM integration: Enabled ingestion of on-premises asset data into Cloudaware CMDB, unifying visibility and lifecycle management across hybrid infrastructure.

4. Implementation

The implementation was completed in phases over a 90-day period and included:

  1. Deployment of CMDB collectors via cross-cloud API connections and SCCM ingestion
  2. Unified visibility across AWS, Azure, and GCP through centralized dashboards.
  3. Configuration of tagging policies and cost allocation reports in the FinOps module.
  4. Custom compliance policies aligned with Caterpillar's internal audit framework.
  5. Real-time incident correlation through New Relic and PagerDuty integrations.
  6. Integration with SCCM to ingest and normalize on-prem asset data, enriching the CMDB for a complete hybrid infrastructure view.
  7. Staff onboarding and ongoing training for compliance and cost tracking workflows.

5. Results

Caterpillar saw measurable outcomes within the first three months: • 100% cloud and on-prem asset visibility: Complete inventory coverage across AWS, Azure, GCP, and SCCM-managed environments. • 42% reduction in compliance violations: Through continuous monitoring and policy automation. • $627,000 in annual cloud cost savings: Enabled by rightsizing and eliminating wasteful spend. • 34% faster incident resolution: Thanks to integrated alerting and improved context from New Relic and PagerDuty. • Improved audit readiness: Streamlined evidence collection and policy enforcement for internal and external audits.

6. Testimonial

"Cloudaware gave us the visibility we were missing across all our clouds—and the control we needed to enforce policies and optimize costs. Their integrations with tools we already use, like New Relic, PagerDuty, and SCCM, made adoption seamless and impactful." - Sarah Mitchell, Cloud Operations Manager, Caterpillar Inc.

7. Conclusion

Cloudaware empowered Caterpillar to regain control over its complex multi-cloud infrastructure, drive down costs, and always stay audit-ready. Want to achieve the same? Contact Cloudaware today to schedule a demo and see how we can help you streamline your cloud operations.

Ready to
get started?