[chrisjc]

Have you come up with a process, or an idea for a process to ensure this doesn't happen?

For instance when they create a provisioning request, are you able to set an extremely low threshold? When they say that won't do, the cost increases and their able to see/understand and start to care about the actual lifecycles of what they're creating?

Surely there is a way to project and monitor the cost of their resources over time, and deliver them an invoice on a regular basis? In other words something like a cost attribution model? That way when the bills start to increase dramatically overtime, pinpointing the heavy hitters becomes trivial, and when they come knocking on your door to "do something about it" you can just say "go talk to Bob".

I don't mean to sound like I'm trivializing the problem (honestly I can relate as I've gone through it myself), but I'd love to hear how anyone else has dealt with this issue effectively.

[jabroni_salad]

It comes down to monitoring, alerting, and followup. In other words, "good ops", which is lacking almost everywhere. Unfortunately that is always a moving target, with added complexity being that we're an external service provider and have limited authority in the client environment. Also, the sorts of companies that outsource their ops will also be willing to change providers multiple times, so it's often like trying to live in a library that has seen many generations of librarians each with their own ideas for how things ought to be organized.