FinOps is not just about the tech team or the platform team managing the environment in a cost- effective way. The onus lies on all the business and application leads as much as it lies on the tech team or platform team.
My thoughts on FinOps that highlight its strategic value for managing cloud costs:
1. Collective Accountability :
Prioritizing business value over isolated cost-cutting should be the charter. FinOps has to be the collective responsibility of business stakeholders, application leads, OEM providers and the support team (tech or platform team).
2. Not relying only on OEM / hyperscaler data :
Hyperscalers are in a position to provide costs only on the basis of native services being served Platforms (eg. Dataiku, Snowflake) provide credit consumption in isolation. So the responsibility of platform or tech team to consolidate / aggregate data and view it through a single console.
3. Simple Governance :
Ensuring what users and/or teams are given Access to cloud services and/or platform services. Every team has to be monitored to ensure there are no unused apps lurking in the ecosystem.
4. Take OpsSec seriously
Ensure tagging and monitoring are implemented in a well thought-out fashion. Tagging and monitoring go a long way in categorizing and isolating cost-heavy pockets of the ecosystem and the organization.
5. Enterprise level practices
Ensure saving plans, licensing costs, best practices are defined at the highest level of the organization and trickled down to the last denominator.
6. Periodic Reviews :
Periodic reviews are conducted not just in terms of cost but also in architecture and performance. Improving performance and revisiting, refactoring, or revising the architecture also lead to significant cost savings.
Conclusion :
Maintaining OpsSec, agility, providing right governance and ensuring collective responsibility of the cloud ecosystem goes a long way in having a robust FinOps implementation in the organization.
Author : Himanshu Shah - Founder & CTO
