Increase Cloud
Business Value with
FinOps as a Service
Introduction to
Cloud Financial Management
and Consulting
The term FinOps combines “Finance” and “DevOps” and stands for a relatively new and innovative cloud financial management practice. It is not only about computing cloud cost optimization but also about creating financial accountability within the organization and getting the most business value from the cloud. To organize digital cloud cost optimization in a company, it is essential to create a collaborative effort between Finance, IT, and DevOps. The framework is implemented in four steps – analysis, benchmarking, optimization, and negotiation.
A professional cloud FinOps analyst can minimize financial risks, make cloud payments and bills predictable and manageable, as well as accelerate agility. Such an expert helps to optimize the whole ecosystem and connect the cost of cloud services to business value and higher ROI. Cloud assessment and cost optimization services allow for managing cloud disbursements wisely while increasing the efficiency of its usage. Consulting and cloud finance management is beneficial not only for cost optimization in cloud computing but also for developing a systematic approach to the matter.
Cloud Services and Their Costs
Cloud services offer on-demand IT resources with a pay-to-use charging model. Cloud computing can be affordable, flexible, and hugely advantageous when approached strategically. Businesses use it for a variety of processes from storage to software development and service delivery. As it is quite democratic and many employees can access it or order cloud services, cloud cost management and optimization are extremely important.
Cloud cost optimization means evaluating the best offers and services, establishing the scope needed, and planning a structured approach. The FinOps manager works closely with other departments to analyze the company’s needs in terms of cloud services and suggests the most efficient and affordable models. FinOps engineer works with software solutions and cloud infrastructure for cost and performance optimization.
Without a cloud cost optimization analyst on your team, a company might end up piling bills. The costs might overgrow the business value of cloud services. For instance, employees might order cloud storage separately, although if they communicated their needs, cloud cost optimization vendors could find a better solution. As a result, at the end of the month company gets a huge bill that could be avoided.
Cost optimization cloud service is a great practice that ensures financial accountability, a structured approach, and maximum business value. It provides fact-based and transparent decision-making as well as cross-team collaboration. And it ensures that the company gets the highest business value from cloud services at the lowest price possible.
Cost Optimization in AWS
Although exact AWS cloud cost optimization practices depend on the individual needs and requirements of a business, some common methods can be useful for the majority of businesses. The root cause of wasteful spending comes from mismanaged resources, complex pricing options, and difficulties with predicting the final costs.
AWS has over 200 featured services, which means that it takes a lot of time and knowledge to establish which ones offer the best value for a business. It can be quite tricky to understand all the differences and usability without specific expertise.
Common AWS cloud cost monitoring and optimization practices:
Environment tagging.
This is useful to track the AWS costs and organize resources by various categories from an owner to the purpose
Selecting the best pricing model.
It is important to evaluate all deals and offers from saving plans and commitment discounts to EC2 Spot Instances;
Usage of particular Amazon S3 storage tiers.
The Standard tier is an optimal choice for many cases, but for temporary files, there are other tiers available.
Cost Optimization in Google Cloud
Google Cloud cost optimization has its own specifics. GCP cloud cost optimization starts with the evaluation of cost optimization metrics and the effectiveness of the solution. The first ones can be seen in the “Cost Optimization” panel of the GCP console. They include CPU utilization, CPU hours, memory utilization, and memory hours.
It is also essential to analyze cost-related cluster-level metrics in Kubernetes or Workloads. When it comes to space and money waste, the reasons are similar to AWS and other cloud service providers. They come from a lack of structured approach, ineffective utilization and memory usage, and inability to find the best pricing option.
GCP cloud cost optimization practices:
Evaluate the billing.
This is useful to track the AWS costs and organize resources by various categories from an owner to the purpose
Look for the best pricing options.
Those might include sustained use discounts and committed use discounts
Organize data analytics configuration.
Some of them are more costly than others based on controls, clustering, partitioning, streaming inserts, and flex slots
Cost optimization in Azure
Azure cloud cost optimization is another popular FinOps service because of Azure’s worldwide usage. Although Microsoft offers Azure Advisor and helpful videos on cost optimization, they are dealing with common and easy issues. An expert cloud cost optimization engineer, on the other hand, can design a structured approach to a solution’s usage and performance.
Azure charges clients for different types of usage, including logs, platform logs, metrics, alerts, and web tests. This adds to the overall bill and requires technical expertise to set the most efficient processes. There are also data transfer charges that should be also accounted for in the strategy.
Azure cost optimization practices:
Evaluate and forecast your spending.
Use Azure Cost Management, Azure Cost Analysis, Azure Budgets, and/or Azure Price Calculator
Find underused resources.
Utilize the full potential by reconfiguration and consolidation of all underused resources
Tag your resources.
Track your resources with tags to evaluate what consumes the most of the budget
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Separate data between hot and cold storage layers.
The frequently needed data should go to the hot one and those you do not need all the time can go to the cold one -
Constantly monitor resources.
Evaluate how resources are used and remove any storage you do not need or resources that are not utilizedEvaluate how resources are used and remove any storage you do not need or resources that are not utilized -
Create a common layer.
It is one point of operation between various clouds to gain more visibility of the entire infrastructure -
Evaluate costs based on resource group.
This means separating prod and non-prod disbursement in the cloud to see what can be optimized.
Multi-cloud Cost Optimization
It is not uncommon for businesses to use several cloud service platforms and providers. In such a case, there is a need for multi cloud cost optimization, which can be quite complex. It requires cloud cost optimization for compute services providers to have deep knowledge of different cloud platforms, their technical specifics, and pricing models.
A multi-cloud strategy is beneficial as it eliminates the risk of outages and losing data. It also solves the issue of vendor-lock cloud services. And it allows using suitable resources for the right projects. However, this comes with the additional risk of piling cloud service bills.
Cloud Cost Optimization
Services We Offer
Dedicated Cloud Cost Optimization
Consultant working full-time.
In this model, you get a suitable expert to work on your company exclusively. This type of cooperation is beneficial for big volumes of work and complex infrastructures. It also ensures constant performance monitoring and provision of necessary upgrades.
Cloud cost optimization consultants will evaluate the current situation and all hidden costs as well as underutilized resources. They also will work on establishing a structured approach to cloud services for your company to ensure the highest business value. Partnering with a highly experienced consultant on a full-time basis allows for solving all FinOps questions affordably.
Part-time
Cloud Cost Optimization Consultant
This model is suitable for small businesses, startups, or companies that have relatively small cloud infrastructures. Part-time consultants deliver expertise on cloud cost optimization when you need it. This is a budget-friendly opportunity to access top-notch skills and knowledge on the matter. Consultants will analyze and evaluate the current situation, infrastructure performance, and cost-related metrics. They will also prepare a comprehensive strategy for its optimization to significantly increase the business value of cloud computing services for a company.
It is a flexible cooperation model that gives you all the benefits of FinOps as a service while not breaking the budget.
