The memo should summarize five comparable scenarios and link every cost, workload, staffing, service-level, and migration statement to the workbook or source. It should make uncertainty and buyer-owned decisions visible rather than selecting a path by rhetoric.
Present eligible options and their responsibility boundaries
Define the current managed path, a negotiated or right-sized managed path, a hybrid path, a bounded self-hosted pilot, and full internal operation. For each, state the workload and service level modeled, direct cost, operating labor, primary risks, provider dependencies, migration work, and owner for every major duty. Remove an option from the active comparison only with a recorded disqualifying constraint.
Link the summary to dated prices, bills, workload exports, staff-rate assumptions, incident evidence, provider documentation, and formulas. Unknowns remain explicit. A quote that has not been obtained should appear as a list-price or range assumption. A duty without an owner should appear as an operating gap rather than disappearing into a general platform-team line.
End with a reversible test and a recalculation trigger
If the result turns on uncertain migration effort, staff time, performance, or operability, define a bounded pilot that can measure that variable. State its workload, duration, staffing cap, success criteria, rollback, and evidence output. The test should reduce a named uncertainty without committing the full production system to the proposed path.
The buyer owns the final action: renew, negotiate, pilot, migrate, or hold. Record the price, workload, staffing, or requirement change that should reopen the model. This keeps the dossier useful after the meeting and prevents a dated comparison from becoming an unexamined permanent rationale.
Where the service stops
Reality Contact, LLC prepares a technical cost and operating-burden model, but does not provide financial, tax, legal, procurement, security, or compliance advice, select a vendor, certify savings, or own the buyer's architecture decision. The buyer verifies internal rates and requirements, obtains current binding provider quotes, reviews security and compliance with qualified owners, and decides whether to renew, negotiate, pilot, migrate, or hold. This is technical cost modeling and document preparation; it does not replace financial, tax, legal, procurement, security, compliance, or professional advice. Public and supplied prices are dated inputs, not binding quotes, and the buyer must verify current terms and requirements before acting.
Sources: Deloitte Cloud FinOps services; SoftwareOne FinOps services.