Kion Announces New CloudOps Features for Cloud Identity, Automation and FinOps at EDUCAUSE Annual Conference

SAN ANTONIO--EDUCAUSE Annual Conference – Kion, the leading automated CloudOps platform for multicloud, today announced the availability of Kion version 3.11, introducing new features for Identity and Access Management (IAM), compliance automation, and FinOps. These new capabilities are advantageous for organizations, including higher education institutions, looking to implement policy-based controls and enforcements to better manage and automate their multicloud infrastructure. Along with showcasing these new capabilities at EDUCAUSE, the company will also be presenting a session with Northwestern University and Texas A&M University on creating a culture of accountability using a “governance by default” approach to cloud operations.

“Building a Culture of Accountability with Automated Cloud Operations”

"Northwestern brought in Kion to provide financial visibility across our multicloud estate, set up budget-driven automation, and give our users a tool to find savings opportunities,” said Matthew Rich, Cloud Systems Engineering Manager at Northwestern University. "These FinOps capabilities brought immediate, actionable benefits to our IT and finance stakeholders in terms of ownership and accountability. Along the way, we found Kion very useful in creating opportunities to maintain our high-touch relationship with cloud users across the university. And now we are looking at additional capabilities in Kion, especially related to compliance, to see how we can realize even more value from this platform.”

This latest release expands Kion’s unique approach to cloud access federation through delivery of a secure IAM experience, streamlines compliance automation, and supports the FinOps Open Cost & Usage Specification (FOCUS). Kion v3.11 offers enterprise CloudOps and FinOps teams:

“Managing cloud identity in higher education is extremely complex – especially when you weigh the impacts that permissions and access can have on your cost and compliance posture. Faculty, staff, students, and researchers are groups with constant change,” said Randy Shore, Chief Customer Officer at Kion. “The fluidity and large turnover often lead to thousands of groups to manage for least privileged access. We are continuing to invest in providing an easy solution for cloud permissions management, especially for higher education institutions where cloud access, provisioning and deprovisioning are critical.”

Kion will be leading an Industry Insights panel at EDUCAUSE featuring Northwestern’s Matthew Rich and Dan Landerman, Senior Cloud Engineer, as well as Texas A&M University’s Joseph Rafferty, Cloud Engineering Manager. The session, “Building a Culture of Accountability with Automated Cloud Operations,” will provide insights into how leading universities have implemented sound financial management, security, and compliance controls by providing their teams with visibility, guardrails, and automation.

You can visit Kion at booth #8061 in the Enterprise Strategy, Infrastructure, and Support Neighborhood. Kion proudly supports dozens of institutions across higher education and research on their journey to secure and streamline cloud operations. To learn more, visit Kion’s Higher Ed industry page.

Kion will begin offering v3.11 in November 2024.

About Kion

Kion automates CloudOps with a single platform providing policy-based identity, FinOps, and compliance for multicloud infrastructure. Kion helps organizations achieve ‘governance by default’ through improved visibility, automation, guardrails, and guidance across AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI environments. This helps enterprises reduce complexity, eliminate chaos, and minimize manual work so they can innovate faster with less risk. Wherever they are on their cloud journey, Kion empowers organizations to confidently provision accounts, maintain financial control, and ensure compliance with security regulations. Kion serves leading commercial, higher education, and government agencies including Indeed, Verizon, NASA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).