5 Best practices to leverage FinOps

Many enterprises today are in a quandary with regards to the public cloud. Cost efficiency in these times is what will keep most businesses afloat, at the same time, digital forerunners will always hold an advantage. In this scenario the million-dollar question is, how do we best circumnavigate the trade-offs amid cloud performance, quality, and cost?

It is a tricky question for sure. Cloud services are designed by engineers and cloud architects, monitored and deployed by IT staff, and budgeted by department managers. None of the business silo can truly understand or see what the other party is up to, clearly making the flow less efficient.

These very challenges have given rise to FinOps. FinOps refers to cloud financial operations. Just as DevOps aims to break down silos and bring developers and operations in cohesion, FinOps seeks to hitch management teams, IT, product, and finance. According to the FinOps foundation, FinOps is the exercise of bringing financial accountability to the variable spend model of cloud, permitting distributed teams to make better informed decisions in cohesion, with respect to speed, cost, and quality.

FinOps if implemented the right way can aid your organisation tackle these challenges and help you understand your cloud costs in a better way. Let us understand the five best practices you can employ to make the most out of FinOps.

1. The Right Team:

The most essential factor that is going to help you make the most out FinOps is your team. Under the right executive leadership, and with the right representatives from finance, product, and engineering FinOps can turn your workflow into a seamless ecosystem, rather than each silo being an isolated island. This team will outline the KPIs and metrics that assist as guardrails for the enterprise, so choose your team wisely.

2. Cloud Awareness:

A major barrier with respect to cloud is that teams who contribute to cloud cost have little awareness about cloud cost drivers. A fundamental FinOps practice is warranting cloud cost visibility for all parties involved. All parties ought to understand how their departments influence cloud costs and where they can make necessary modifications.

Different departments may have different expectations or insights about cloud costs, so being open to information and learning is critical. This especially stands true when dealing with technology as tech is always evolving. With visibility it is also important to ensure a regular flow of communication amongst the different teams.

3. Single source of Information

Establishing a common platform to view your cloud costs is another significant principal of FinOps. Larger enterprises may operate with diverse tools for managing cloud costs, with each team operating a different tool. Consequently, every party is viewing cloud cost through different lens.   Because each team looks at cost through a different lens, and there is no standardization in the numbers. MSRcosmos helps you with centralizing your cost platform systems that gives each party the type of statistics it needs to make vital decisions.

4. Leverage Cost, Reduce Waste

Once you have all the above aspects in place, take advantage of easily available options for cost optimization, such as reserved instances (RIs) and savings plans. Depending on the type of services you use, you could also consider private pricing agreements. Then comes waste reduction. This is a simple and efficient way to immediately bring down costs. For instance, remove any legacy resources that are not in use.

Also, consider rearchitecting your application. A lift and shift approach when migrating to the cloud may be a good option at the beginning, but in the long run, once central governance is in place and you have ample cost visibility, do optimise your applications to make the maximum of your cloud services and features at lesser costs.

5. Understand basic Cloud Costing

Cloud is supposed to help you innovate, so the sole focus should be not just cost cutting but also developing a systemic approach as you grow. It is imperative to understand how you can use the cloud efficiently in the context of your enterprise’s needs.

Unit cost puts pricing into context. It is a great idea to start with a single metric that works for your business. From here, you can get more intrinsic and advanced, and start tabbing unit costs for various products, market segments, and more.

Get Started with MSRcosmos

These FinOps best practices can transform your cloud strategy and environment, enabling you to become a lean, clean and efficient machine. As a trusted partner for some of the leading enterprises across the globe, MSRcosmos can help you embark on your FinOps journey with highly differentiated skill-set and staunch timeline delivery. Schedule a demo today to learn how MSRcosmos empowers you to build an effective FinOps program customised to suit yours and your teams’ requirements.