TALKING

FinOps isn ’ t only about reducing costs . The approach aims to support the best cloud spend that maximises the value of all necessary computing resources . stakeholders , as well as metrics that all teams understand and use .

Achieving maximum benefits

As well as optimising cloud usage and reducing costs , an effective FinOps strategy can provide a range of other business benefits . These include driving business innovation by freeing resources for new projects and enabling trust and increased collaboration among teams .

A FinOps strategy can also help to prevent cloud sprawl and overprovisioning of cloud resources while also improving financial responsibility of teams and the organisation as a whole . Increasingly important is its ability to support enterprise endeavours by optimising digital architectures as well as providing the insights to support reducing carbon footprint and contributing to ESG programs .

Overcoming challenges

While it delivers significant benefits , undertaking a FinOps strategy can also create some challenges . Some that need to be addressed include :

y A misalignment between technology and finance teams : Engineers focus on cloud computing , innovation , and moving workloads to the cloud , while finance teams focus on minimising costs . FinOps requires both teams to work together to develop goals for cloud utilisation . y A lack of motivation for taking action : Developers need the freedom to ‘ fail fast ’ and take risks without worrying about cloud costs to improve continuous integration and continuous delivery processes . Sharing cloud spend and creating important cost-efficient solutions are key to achieving companywide initiatives . y Misallocation of shared costs : Unallocated shared costs can hinder the transparency and accounting accuracy of cloud spending . Identification and correct allocation of shared costs is therefore critical . y Increased waste and unused resources : Any cloud workloads that exceed agreed-upon capacity or leave unused resources increase cloud waste . Adopting observability and monitoring tools can effectively detect and eliminate unused resources to prevent waste .

Undertaking a FinOps strategy can make a significant difference to the expenses associated with usage of cloud-based platforms and services . By taking the time to carefully plan the approach and obtaining buy-in from all teams , an organisation can expect to achieve sizable business benefits . p

38 INTELLIGENTCIO APAC www . intelligentcio . com