Cloud FinOps

Chapter 1. What Is FinOps?

FinOps is a direct response to the stimulus of cloud. It’s not something that one person or company came up with; it’s a movement that evolved spontaneously, around the world, due to the environment created by on-demand cloud resources encountering no-longer-relevant technology management methodology. It is a cultural change and set of processes that has been—and likely will be—called other names.

In the simplest terms, FinOps brings financial accountability to the variable spend model of cloud. But that description merely hints at the outcome. The cultural change of running in cloud moves ownership of technology and financial decision making out to the edges of the organization. It flips long-held, forward-looking capacity planning methodology on its head to become rate-optimization analysis for technology that’s already been used. And it forces IT, finance, and business professionals to work together in unfamiliar ways. It’s an acceptance that the old ways of managing infrastructure aren’t just ineffective in cloud; they are irrelevant.

In this chapter, we’ll describe the core principles of FinOps, where the movement came from, and why every organization needs to embrace it for cloud success.

But first, let’s set the stage for defining FinOps with a story of an individual practitioner’s journey.

The FinOps Hero’s Journey

Today’s FinOps leader often comes out of a world of managing, planning, and accounting for IT and virtualized servers. Here’s a ...