My day job at IBM is developing automation solutions to help organizations solve performance and monitoring problems in the IT industry. As the foundation of today’s digital transformation, cloud and Hybrid cloud The technologies offer many benefits, from cost savings to flexibility, security, and automatic software updates. Still, all benefits come with various costs that can be difficult to measure and manage.
What makes cloud spending difficult?
The tricky part about cloud costs is that it’s very complicated to fully understand what cloud costs will be. Tracking surface-level cloud costs is easy enough, but when it comes to things like Kubernetes workloads — how software is deployed, scaled, and managed within and across clouds — AI models To estimate and deliver, cost estimates are extremely difficult and often wild. Incorrect because there are too many gaps that are not being accounted for.
Some gaps are the size of canyons, and others are harder to find. Remember, this isn’t even the pinnacle of cloud complexity. It will only get worse.
Think of this situation in terms of getting AI initiatives off the ground. Organizations are fine with the initial high associated cloud costs to generate more revenue and profit. However, this way of spending is not sustainable.
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What is FinOps, and how can it help manage cloud costs?
Managing cloud costs is so important that the IT industry has created a practice to manage it. FinOps, as it is known in my industry, is an operational framework for managing cloud spend from engineering to operations. Actually, according to Civo’s Cost of Cloud Report 202460% of organizations saw an increase in cloud spending this past year, and 40% of them said spending increased by more than 25%.
If you factor in the big macro factors of companies cutting resources for efficiency, inflationary cost increases, and new technology spending, CFOs need more support and visibility.
How can partnering with CIOs and using automation help CFOs deal with cloud costs?
CIOs can help their CFO colleagues adopt AI-powered FinOps practices that reduce the burden of tracking, tagging, and constantly chasing your operations team to understand how budgets are being spent. Yes, real-time visibility and decision support at your fingertips.
The cloud operates in real-time, but can be predicted and forecasted in a way that improves visibility and automates resource management, monitoring and cost transparency.
See: How AI is Changing the Cloud Security and Risk Equation (Tech Republic)
Automation can save by overprovisioning CPUs/GPUs, memory, and storage. This can help monitor application health and proactively troubleshoot issues. Automation can also provide a complete and granular breakdown of how cloud costs are stacking up.
Partnering with CIO colleagues and implementing automation solutions can help take the CFO off the hot seat. CFOs need to be able to manage budget expectations while keeping the business on track with innovation and spending.
CFOs, CIOs, engineers, DevOps, and cloud/AI team leads must tackle this problem together. The synergy of aligning business and financial results will allow costs to be minimized and capacity to be maximized simultaneously. A good FinOps currency means everyone has equal visibility and accountability into spending.
Download: Year-round IT budget template (TechRepublic Premium)
Is investing in a FinOps automation solution worth it?
Yes, the additional initial cost of buying a FinOps automation solution will pay for itself in less than two years – I bet it’s 12 months. can
Implementation of aa FinOps automation solutions is critical. Get it done right from the start – maximize connectivity, efficiency, and collaboration – and watch cloud costs and your CFO stress fade away.
Some old financial advice has never been more relevant than now: Live within your means. Bills shouldn’t surprise you or make you sweat, and CFOs shouldn’t pay for your overspending.
Bill Lubig is responsible for IBM IT Automation Software Product Management. It includes a range of technologies that allow people and organizations to optimize their technology spend and ensure the health and performance of applications.
Bill has been in the enterprise software space for over 25 years with a variety of roles in engineering and product management including unstructured data/content management, information lifecycle governance, business process management, machine learning and AI, and application modernization. , FinOps, and IT included. Operations Bill graduated Sama Kim Loud from the University of Maryland College Park.