FinOps: Shaping the Future of Cloud Financial Management (Guest blog from VE3)
Author: Aniket Patil, AWS DevOps Engineer, VE3
In today's digital era, organisations are rapidly pivoting to cloud computing, enticed by its scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. Having said that, the swift and widespread adoption of cloud services introduces a new challenge for businesses - proficient management and optimisation of their cloud expenditure. Here is where FinOps emerges as a vital player.
FinOps, a blend of "Finance" and "DevOps", is an evolving discipline in cloud financial management and a cultural practice that works to amplify the business value organisations derive from their cloud investments. It does so by facilitating collaboration across engineering, finance, technology, and business teams to make data-driven spending decisions, thereby stressing the vital communication and collaboration between business and engineering teams.
If the impression is that FinOps only serves to save money, it's time for a reassessment. The crux of FinOps is about 'generating money'. It fosters a cross-functional dialogue about when and where to invest. Occasionally, a business may opt to tighten its spending; other times, it will decide to pump more resources into specific areas. But with FinOps, teams now comprehend why these decisions are being made.
An Examination of FinOps Core Principles and Practices
The core of this management practice resides in the application of cost controls to cloud deployments, all while maintaining uninhibited access to cloud resources for developers.
- Fostering Collaboration
In the dynamic and real-time world of cloud operations, financial, technological, product, and business teams are compelled to interact in near real-time. This collaboration becomes crucial as cloud operations run on a per-resource, per-second basis.
- Realising Business Value
Metrics reflecting unit economics and value articulately demonstrate the business impact, as compared to only looking at aggregated spending. It encourages thoughtful trade-offs among cost, quality, and speed.
- Cultivating Ownership of Usage
The responsibility for usage and cost is delegated to the stakeholders who are using these resources, with engineers owning costs right from architectural design through to ongoing operations.
- Promoting Cost Transparency
Cost data, upon becoming available, should be promptly processed and shared. The creation of real-time visibility autonomously drives improved cloud utilisation.
- Centrally Managed FinOps
A centralised team is responsible for driving FinOps. This team encourages, evangelises, and enables the adoption of best practices under a shared responsibility model. Executive buy-in for FinOps, its practices, and processes is fundamentally required.
- Leveraging the Variable Cost Model of Cloud
The variable cost model of the cloud is an opportunity, not a risk, that can be harnessed to deliver increased value. This opportunity can be capitalised upon by embracing just-in-time prediction, planning, and purchasing of cloud capacity.
Building a Robust FinOps Framework: Key Steps and Considerations
The primary purpose of a FinOps framework is to establish governance policies supervised by a multidisciplinary team. A successful FinOps effort empowers organisations to gain control over cloud spending, improve cost efficiency, and align financial and operational objectives.
Outlined below are the critical steps for structuring a seamless FinOps framework:
- Define Objectives: Establish your FinOps goals, such as cost optimisation, budget management, resource allocation, and accountability. Identify the main stakeholders, including finance, IT, and operations teams.
- Assemble a FinOps Team: Create a cross-functional team made up of members from finance, IT, and operations. Assign distinct roles and responsibilities within the team, including a FinOps lead, cloud architect, financial analyst, and technical specialists.
- Pinpoint Cloud Cost Drivers: Understand the variables impacting cloud costs, encompassing compute resources, storage, data transfer, and employed services. Analyse past spending habits and pinpoint areas for optimization.
- Adopt Cloud Cost Management Tools: Select appropriate tools or platforms that can effectively monitor and manage cloud costs. Popular options include cloud provider cost management tools, third-party cost optimisation solutions, and FinOps-centric platforms.
- Establish Budgets and Allocate Costs: Define budgets for cloud spending and distribute costs across various departments or projects. Implement tagging strategies to track resource usage and attribute costs to specific teams or initiatives.
- Design Cost Optimization Frameworks: Develop frameworks for identifying cost optimisation opportunities. This process includes rightsizing resources, utilising reserved instances or savings plans, leveraging spot instances for non-critical workloads, and refining storage and data transfers.
- Monitor and Analyse Costs: Consistently monitor and analyse cloud costs to detect anomalies, trends, and areas for improvement. Generate regular reports and dashboards to share insights with all relevant stakeholders.
Navigating the FinOps Lifecycle for Enhanced Cloud Cost Efficiency
The FinOps Lifecycle is an ongoing process in which organisations consistently cycle through various stages to refine cloud cost management. They collect data on cloud usage and expenditures, thereby establishing transparency. The optimisation phase emphasises cost-saving strategies such as leveraging discounts provided by cloud providers, rightsizing resources, and employing reserved instances. Lastly, the operate stage involves instituting processes, automation, and governance to uphold cost efficiency, made possible through ceaseless monitoring and reporting.
Conclusion
FinOps is more than just a financial strategy or a technology trend. It's the critical bridge uniting technology and finance, shaping the future of cloud financial management.
As we move forward in an era where the cloud is no longer a choice but a necessity, FinOps will define how businesses optimise costs, enabling them to unlock new opportunities, drive innovation, and provide better value to their clients. The key to success lies not just in adopting FinOps, but in embedding it into the fabric of organisational culture. As we step into this new epoch of cloud financial management, FinOps will redefine the rules fuelling the evolution and expansion of possibilities in a cloud-driven world.
Mastering the intricacies of cloud financial management necessitates a deep understanding of both technological and fiscal operations. VE3, boasting extensive expertise as an IT Consulting and Services company, is ideally positioned to help businesses effectively adopt the FinOps model. Our team of seasoned professionals excels in designing customised FinOps strategies that align with your business objectives, ensuring a seamless transition to the cloud, empowering cross-functional teams and fostering accountability, and incorporating state-of-the-art tools for precise cloud cost forecasting and optimization.
You can read the full article, “FinOps: Shaping the Future of Cloud Financial Management”, on VE3’s website: Navigate the Future with FinOps | VE3 Global
The Multi-Cloud Convergence
Aniket Patil from VE3 discusses harnessing the strengths of multi-cloud to drive business performance and unlock innovation
Chris Hazell
Sue Daley OBE
Sue Daley OBE
Sue leads techUK's Technology and Innovation work.
This includes work programmes on cloud, data protection, data analytics, AI, digital ethics, Digital Identity and Internet of Things as well as emerging and transformative technologies and innovation policy.
In 2025, Sue was honoured with an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to the Technology Industry in the New Year Honours List.
She has been recognised as one of the most influential people in UK tech by Computer Weekly's UKtech50 Longlist and in 2021 was inducted into the Computer Weekly Most Influential Women in UK Tech Hall of Fame.
A key influencer in driving forward the data agenda in the UK, Sue was co-chair of the UK government's National Data Strategy Forum until July 2024. As well as being recognised in the UK's Big Data 100 and the Global Top 100 Data Visionaries for 2020 Sue has also been shortlisted for the Milton Keynes Women Leaders Awards and was a judge for the Loebner Prize in AI. In addition to being a regular industry speaker on issues including AI ethics, data protection and cyber security, Sue was recently a judge for the UK Tech 50 and is a regular judge of the annual UK Cloud Awards.
Prior to joining techUK in January 2015 Sue was responsible for Symantec's Government Relations in the UK and Ireland. She has spoken at events including the UK-China Internet Forum in Beijing, UN IGF and European RSA on issues ranging from data usage and privacy, cloud computing and online child safety. Before joining Symantec, Sue was senior policy advisor at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). Sue has an BA degree on History and American Studies from Leeds University and a Masters Degree on International Relations and Diplomacy from the University of Birmingham. Sue is a keen sportswoman and in 2016 achieved a lifelong ambition to swim the English Channel.
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Laura Foster
Laura Foster
Laura is techUK’s Associate Director for Technology and Innovation.
She supports the application and expansion of emerging technologies, including Quantum Computing, High-Performance Computing, AR/VR/XR and Edge technologies, across the UK. As part of this, she works alongside techUK members and UK Government to champion long-term and sustainable innovation policy that will ensure the UK is a pioneer in science and technology
Before joining techUK, Laura worked internationally as a conference researcher and producer covering enterprise adoption of emerging technologies. This included being part of the strategic team at London Tech Week.
Laura has a degree in History (BA Hons) from Durham University, focussing on regional social history. Outside of work she loves reading, travelling and supporting rugby team St. Helens, where she is from.
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