What Is FinOps (About)

We have taken the following definition from Cloud FinOps by J.R. Storment and Mike Fuller (a book we recommend) with some minor adaptations:

FinOps refers to the emerging professional movement for cloud cost management that advocates a collaborative working relationship between DevOps, Finance and Procurement, resulting in an iterative, data-driven management of cloud service spend. Lowering the unit economics of cloud while simultaneously increasing the cloud efficiency and, ultimately, the profitability of the cloud enabled environment.

FinOps focuses on building a culture of accountability within the organization, one in which everyone works collaboratively to meet common goals, to understand the organisation’s cloud use, to report on it effectively and transparently, and, yes, to optimize cost and usage to achieve the best value for each cloud dollar spent.

We’ll answer the question ‘What is FinOps’ by listing 8 core principles:

1. Engineering, finance and procurement teams need to collaborate;

2. Decisions are driven by the business value of cloud;

3. Everyone takes ownership for their cloud usage;

4. FinOps reports should be accessible, timely and understood through common language;

5. Focus relentlessly on clean and complete data to drive decisions;

6. A centralized team drives FinOps;

7. Distinguish between centralised paying less and decentralised using less;

8. Take advantage of the variable cost model of the cloud.

Ultimately, FinOps is about creating what we call a Desired State of Skill, People, Processes, Tools and Targets based on a number of Core Capabilities across Inform, Optimise and Operate.

Implementing FinOps follows a Crawl- Walk–Run Model of increasing Capability in each Core Capability.

At FinAnts we have identified over 80 individual Desired State Attributes that provide a structured and manageable approach of implementing Minimum Loveable Products for each State.

Want to know more? Contact us:

• For Americas & Canada – [email protected]
• For EMEA & Asia Pacific– [email protected]

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