From complexity to clarity: NCI modernized cloud operations and cost management with Datadog

By connecting performance, cost, and operational data through Datadog, ICF and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) established a defensible basis for managing cloud investments at scale.

Challenge

Increased reliance on the cloud brings real risks for federal agencies—rising costs, fragmented visibility, and potential security vulnerabilities. Leaders must ensure that every technology dollar directly supports mission outcomes while maintaining rigorous federal security standards.

For the National Cancer Institute, these challenges were compounded by federal procurement constraints and the need to integrate legacy systems alongside modern cloud environments. Improving cloud monitoring and cloud cost management became a priority, but only if the solution could operate effectively within federal frameworks and scale across a complex, multi-cloud environment.

Solution

We partnered with NCI to assess its options and design a solution aligned to both mission and operational realities.

Together, we conducted a thorough Analysis of Alternatives and multiple proofs of concept to identify a platform that could:

• Leverage AI-driven optimization through Datadog Watchdog and integrate with ServiceNow
• Provide a multi-cloud, single pane view across environments
• Stakeholder-centric dashboards within Datadog showed cloud costs by application, business group, and cloud service.

Based on this evaluation, we recommended Datadog’s unified observability platform. The solution enabled NCI to move beyond basic monitoring toward a more intelligent, financially transparent model of cloud operations. Stakeholder centric dashboards within Datadog showed cloud costs by application, business group, and cloud service.

Results

By implementing Datadog, we helped NCI achieve measurable improvements in operational efficiency and cost management:

• More than 25% savings in licensing costs through a streamlined cloud cost management implementation
• Improved correlation between cloud costs, application portfolios, and performance metrics
• Increased efficiency through better collaboration and faster incident response
• Improved cost visibility and AI-based optimization recommendations across more than 300 AWS and Google Cloud Platform accounts
• Streamlined operations through management of 700+ infrastructure hosts across multiple applications in a centralized view
• Unified dashboards grouped by applications and business units, enabling teams to monitor cost thresholds and optimize cloud spend across accounts

We’re continuing to support NCI’s efforts to maximize its Datadog investment. One avenue is Datadog’s Watchdog tool, which incorporates AI to identify patterns in cloud application vulnerabilities and usage. Another is integrating Datadog with the ServiceNow platform to bring actionable, trackable insights into its established IT service management workflows.

Based on the success of this partnership, we’re applying this model to help other federal agencies modernize their cloud operations while strengthening governance and accountability.

Explore our FinOps Jumpstart for Datadog on AWS Marketplace.