How to Optimize Your Cloud Spending (FinOps 101)
Cloud costs can spiral out of control. Learn the basics of FinOps and how to get the most value from your cloud investment.
What is FinOps?
FinOps is a cultural practice and a framework that brings financial accountability to the variable spend model of cloud, enabling distributed teams to make business trade-offs between speed, cost, and quality. It’s the combination of people, process, and technology to manage cloud costs.
Key Principles of FinOps
The FinOps Foundation has identified six principles that form the basis of the FinOps practice:
- Teams need to collaborate.
- Everyone takes ownership for their cloud usage.
- A centralized team drives the FinOps practice.
- Decisions are driven by business value of cloud.
- Take advantage of the variable cost model of the cloud.
- Reports should be accessible and timely.
How to Get Started with FinOps
Getting started with FinOps can be broken down into three phases: Inform, Optimize, and Operate.
- Inform: The first step is to gain visibility into your cloud spending. This means understanding what you’re spending, where you’re spending it, and who is responsible for it.
- Optimize: Once you have visibility into your cloud spending, you can start to identify opportunities for optimization. This could include right-sizing instances, using reserved instances, or taking advantage of spot instances.
- Operate: The final phase is to operationalize your FinOps practice. This means creating a culture of cost-consciousness, and putting in place the processes and tools to manage your cloud costs on an ongoing basis.
Conclusion
FinOps is a powerful tool that can help you to get the most value from your cloud investment. By bringing financial accountability to the variable spend model of cloud, you can empower your teams to make better business decisions and to drive innovation.