A Tier 1 financial services firm had made an aggressive cloud-first commitment to Google Cloud Platform during a period of rapid infrastructure modernisation. Under time pressure from a board-mandated digital transformation programme, the client's infrastructure team had accepted a two-year committed-use discount structure at rates that, while technically discounted from list price, were significantly above what Google's commercial team could be persuaded to offer a client of their scale and strategic importance.
The over-commitment problem had three dimensions. First, the CUD volume was based on peak capacity projections that had not materialised — the actual consumption was running at roughly 70% of the committed baseline, meaning the client was paying for capacity they were not using. Second, the service mix within the commitment had not been optimised — a disproportionate share of the committed spend was allocated to Compute Engine SKUs while BigQuery and Cloud Spanner workloads (which were growing faster than anticipated) carried no commitment benefit. Third, the egress costs generated by the client's hybrid architecture had been entirely excluded from the CUD conversation, and were running at $340K per quarter on standard rates.
Midway through the two-year commitment, the client's CFO flagged the cloud cost trajectory as a significant concern. Internal teams lacked the contractual and commercial expertise to determine whether mid-term renegotiation was possible, what leverage existed, or how to approach Google without signalling weakness.
We reviewed the existing CUD structure, master agreement, and all order forms in detail. Our analysis identified three contractual provisions that created renegotiation opportunities: a change-of-scope clause triggered by the client's partial migration to an alternative cloud provider, a service-mix adjustment provision that had not been exercised, and a volume flexibility window that the client had been unaware of. These provisions collectively created legitimate grounds for a mid-term commercial discussion.
We modelled the client's actual and projected GCP consumption across all service categories for the remaining commitment period and the following renewal. The analysis identified that the optimal CUD structure differed significantly from the existing one: lower Compute Engine commitment, higher BigQuery and Spanner commitment, inclusion of an egress optimisation allowance, and quarterly flex provisions to accommodate the client's variable processing demands in financial year-end periods.
Before engaging Google's commercial team, we developed a negotiation strategy that positioned the mid-term discussion as a partnership optimisation rather than a dispute. We identified two Google Cloud services the client had not yet adopted (Vertex AI and Cloud Composer) that represented genuine upsell opportunities for Google — and structured our negotiation approach to offer expanded adoption in exchange for commercial restructuring. This gave Google's account team a path to executive approval that didn't require admitting an original pricing error.
Our former Google Cloud commercial VP led negotiations, engaging first with the account team, then with the regional commercial director when account-level authority was insufficient. We ran parallel conversations with Google's finance team on the mid-term adjustment mechanism and with Google's technical team on the egress architecture — ensuring that commercial concessions were matched with technical solutions that genuinely reduced Google's costs as well as the client's.
The final phase addressed the renewal structure that would follow the amended mid-term agreement. We negotiated a renewal framework that included quarterly consumption reviews with defined adjustment mechanisms, egress credits triggered by specific volume thresholds, and Vertex AI adoption milestones tied to pricing protections. This governance framework was designed to prevent the over-commitment problem from recurring.
The engagement delivered $5.1M in net savings across the remaining mid-term period and the restructured renewal: $2.3M from CUD restructuring and rightsizing, $1.36M from egress cost reduction, and $1.44M from improved renewal pricing. The governance framework negotiated as part of the renewal structure was projected to generate a further $800K in optimisation value in the first year of operation.
The client's VP of Infrastructure noted that the engagement had "fundamentally changed how we approach cloud commercial conversations — we now treat them as negotiations, not procurement transactions."
"We were mid-contract, over-committed, and genuinely unsure whether renegotiation was even possible. Atonement Licensing not only made it possible — they restructured the entire relationship in a way that actually makes commercial sense for both sides."Vice President, Infrastructure & Cloud — Tier 1 Financial Services Group
Comprehensive guide to AWS, Azure, and GCP committed-use structuring, CUD optimisation, egress management, and enterprise cloud agreement negotiation tactics.
Weekly cloud contract intelligence, GCP and hyperscaler advisory insights for IT leaders and cloud procurement teams.
Cloud over-commitment is recoverable — but requires specialist intervention before the commitment window closes. We assess your position within 48 hours.
We apply the same methodology to your engagement. Initial scoping call is confidential and obligation-free.