What is FinOps?
In today’s business world, companies are increasingly turning to cloud computing to power their operations. With the benefits of scalability, flexibility, and cost savings, cloud computing has become the go-to solution for businesses looking to stay competitive in today’s fast-paced marketplace.
However, with the benefits of cloud computing come new challenges, particularly around financial management. Many cloud users are surprised when they move to the cloud by the change in costs. The technology hardware that used to be hidden in 5 and 10-year capital expenditures is now showing up monthly as operating expenses.
This is where cloud FinOps comes into play.
Defining FinOps
FinOps, short for Financial Operations, is a set of practices focused on managing the financial aspects of cloud computing. FinOps is a collaborative approach that brings together finance, operations, and engineering teams to optimize cloud usage and drive better financial outcomes.
Cloud FinOps is an essential component of a successful cloud strategy. It helps businesses gain control of their cloud costs and maximize their return on investment. By implementing cloud FinOps practices, businesses can gain visibility into their cloud usage and spending, identify areas of inefficiency, and take action to optimize their cloud infrastructure.
3 Benefits of Cloud FinOps Programs
1. Cost Optimization
Cost optimization is one of the primary benefits of cloud FinOps. With cloud computing, costs can quickly spiral out of control if not managed properly. By implementing cloud FinOps practices, businesses can gain insight into their cloud costs, identify areas of waste, and take action to optimize their cloud usage. This could involve resizing instances, choosing the right storage type, or implementing automation to eliminate manual tasks.
2. Increased Agility
Another benefit of cloud FinOps is increased agility. By adopting cloud FinOps practices, businesses can quickly adapt to changing business needs and take advantage of new opportunities. Cloud FinOps helps businesses move away from traditional budgeting processes, which can be slow and inflexible, and instead embrace a more agile approach to financial management.
3. Cross-Department Collaboration
Cloud FinOps also promotes collaboration between different teams within an organization. By bringing together finance, operations, and engineering teams, businesses can work together to optimize cloud usage and drive better financial outcomes. This collaboration can lead to improved communication, greater visibility into cloud costs, and ultimately better decision-making.
FinOps Resources
Now that we have a better grasp on what FinOps is, and the importance of FinOps to organizations using the cloud, we will now look at some of the resources organizations can use to implement FinOps within their teams.
The FinOps Foundation
For those new to the cloud – or just growing on their cloud journey to the point where they now need to be mindful of the aligned expenses – one fantastic resource to begin training team members and adopting FinOps within an organization is the FinOps Foundation.
The FinOps Foundation is a non-profit organization that was founded in 2019 to promote the adoption of cloud FinOps best practices. The foundation promotes education, community building, and collaboration to advance the field of cloud financial management.
The FinOps Foundation provides a wealth of resources to help businesses adopt cloud FinOps practices. These include training courses, certifications, and a community of FinOps professionals who are ready and willing to share their knowledge and expertise. The foundation also hosts events and webinars to help businesses stay up to date with the latest trends and best practices in cloud financial management.
By bringing together finance, operations, and engineering teams, the foundation aims to foster a culture of transparency, communication, and accountability. This collaboration can help businesses optimize their cloud usage and drive better financial outcomes.
FinOps Acceleration Consulting
If your organization is relatively young in its cloud journey or if you are simply new to FinOps concepts and practices, Perficient can help by providing professional services and automated tools to help accelerate your teams in their journey to an optimized cloud environment.
Perficient’s cloud experts can help with the construction of automated budgets, reports, and optimization opportunities in your cloud infrastructure.
See some examples of our past wins with our customers, where we were able to help our partners achieve more than a 30% reduction in cloud expenditures!
Perficient’s partnerships with industry-leading FinOps SaaS companies, such as CloudBolt, allow us to have a formidable toolbox that we can bring to bear against any problem.
Perficient provides custom-built dashboards and reports which allow our customers to see visually where they are spending their money across any of the major cloud service providers (Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud) and what types of cloud services are having the largest impact.
We also provide automated scanning of cloud environments, which gives our customers a “Cloud Watchdog” that proactively helps organizations identify where they are not using the cloud services properly or in an unoptimized fashion and impacting their service charges.
If your company is new to the cloud or new to FinOps, one resource you may consider is an experienced guide who can accelerate you in your journey to financial optimization – and Perficient can provide that guidance with our professional certified cloud engineering experts.
What Now?
Now that you have a better understanding of FinOps, how do you get started? As in all cases, knowledge is power. To kickstart FinOps within your company, start acquiring knowledge of your cloud environments and how they are being used today. This takes time and effort to dig in, identify what you have in your scope, and what changes you may need to improve your financial position.
Interested in improving your FinOps experiences? Want to chat with friendly cloud experts about where to start? Contact Perficient and accelerate your journey to FinOps!
