With finops for effective cloud cost control

The use of cloud platforms enables companies to develop individual IT resources and entire applications quickly, scalable and highly available to their users. It often occurs that the resources fluctuate in their use and, due to a lack of transparency, they are difficult to make statements about the resulting and forecast costs. In this article you will learn how Cloud Finops supports to make the costs more transparent and optimize in the following.

Table of contents

What is Cloud Finops?

Cloud Finops is An iterative approach to the management and optimization of cloud editions in companies. The term consists of “Financial Operations” and describes the interface between financial, IT and specialist departments. The aim of the approach is to create transparency about the use of cloud resources and increase cost efficiency.

Cloud Finops combines specialist knowledge with powerful tools to specifically support companies in cost optimization. In practice, this means that teams together define clear processes and metrics in order to Avoid unnecessary expenses and use resources as best as possible. For example, a company can identify unused or oversized virtual machines by using cloud finops and automatically shut down or scale.

What challenges can be solved with cloud finops?

Without systematic cost management, cloud expenses can quickly get out of control. Finops enables one Continuous monitoring and controlso that unexpected costs are avoided. In addition, the overview of which department or application causes which costs often lacks. Finops Tools create a detailed distribution of costs at the resource level.

Since cloud resources are dynamically scaled, precise budgeting can be challenging. Cloud Finops helps To make use more predictable and realistically set budgets. Companies often pay for non-used or inefficient cloud resources. With finops, such inefficiencies can be identified and reduced by optimizations such as auto-scaling or reserved instance.

What are the advantages of Cloud Finops?

The use of Cloud Finops offers a wealth of advantages for companies. Through the Analysis and optimization can achieve significant savingsfor example by changing on-demand instances to long-term reserved capacities. In addition, the following advantages arise:

• Improved collaboration: Finops promotes the exchange between financial, IT and specialist departments, which can make decisions in a well-founded manner.
• Flexibility: Companies keep the advantages of scalability and flexibility of cloud services, and can better estimate the financial risks and reduce costs.
• Competition advantage: Companies that successfully use cloud finops can better control their IT costs and concentrate budgets on their core competencies.

The finops process is supported by various tools that enable automated use of resources. Cloud providers such as AWS Cost Explorer or Azure Cost Management offer free tools for monitoring costs and resources. More extensive solutions that are often chargeable offer extended functions such as forecasting or automated optimization.

Solutions from third-party providers such as Cloudhealth or Apptio Cloudability enable the analysis and optimization over several cloud providers. There are also special tools from third-party providers who focus on special aspects such as container use (e.g. Kubecost) or specific providers (e.g. snow flake cost management). Some companies also develop tailor -made finops tools to implement individual requirements that do not meet standard solutions on the market.

Best practices and tips for the start

In order to successfully establish cloud finops, a first Cross-functional team can be built up from finance, IT and specialist areas. This team works together from the start to clearly define requirements and responsibilities. A sensible entry is to first focus on one individual department or application Concentrating as a test environment to achieve quick successes and gain initial experience. transparency The use of cloud costs can be used through the use of Cloud native Tagging strategies and Reporting-Tools to be created so that costs can be clearly assigned and optimized. In addition, companies should Identify measures to optimizefor example through the use of automation such as auto-scaling or reserved instance, which enable savings. Success should be measured via defined KPIs.

Conclusion

In the long term, Cloud Finops continues to develop through the establishment of a finop culture, the continuous expansion to further areas and the use of tailor-made finops tools. With its framework, the Finops Foundation offers a structured approach to continuously improve the strategy and adapt to new requirements.

Read more in future articles in Which phases are divided & Like companies the right type of tool can find out.

You can take that with you

1. Finops is an approach that helps companies better overlook, control and plan their cloud costs
2. The cooperation between finance, IT and specialist departments is closely linked
3. The approach represents a combination of know-how & tools
4. There are different categories of finops tools
5. When used correctly, advantages such as cost savings, improved cooperation, more flexibility & competitive advantages can result

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Max Krug is the team leader for public cloud projects with a focus on advice in the area of ​​(multi) cloud strategy, finops & governance.