FinOps

What is FinOps ?

The FinOps approach, a contraction of the terms finance and operation, aims to monitor and optimize costs in terms of cloud computing. The main underlying challenge? Find the right compromise between the budget and expenses allocated to cloud services on the one hand, and the performance and IT innovation sought in business terms on the other. The objective is not only to save money, but to strive for the right price. In the wake of agile methods, FinOps also involves close collaboration between IT operations management teams and business teams. More than an approach, FinOps is therefore also a corporate culture.

The FinOps approach has given rise to an open source repository of best practices called FinOps World. To set up a FinOps policy, this framework recommends building a structure governance through the creation of a cloud center of excellence. Orchestrated by a FinOps lead, it will typically consist of a program manager, a lead architect, a lead DevOps and a SecOps lead. Objective: to instill the FinOps culture within all IT development and operations teams.

In conjunction with the financial department, the cloud center of excellence will be responsible for defining cost optimization objectives based on the estimated IT budget. Objectives which will then be assigned to the development and operation teams. To monitor the achievement of these objectives, it will draw up a financial report with key performance indicators. A dashboard that will allow finance to monitor the correct implementation of FinOps. Obviously, this management framework involves the definition of a purchasing policy, with recommendations in terms of cloud offers to use, and an ad hoc internal re-invoicing policy.

AWS provides four tools designed to drive spending on its platform. Upstream, AWS Cost Explorer is built around a dashboard to visualize the costs of different cloud services used over time. Allowing different filters to be applied (accounts, periods, offers, etc.), it integrates predictive analysis models based on consumption history. Second tool, AWS Trusted Advisor analyzes in real time the performance of the running instances according to the performance and capacity needs of the customer. It disables inactive virtual machines (VMs) and resizes those that prove to be over-provisioned or unsuitable for the workload. EC2 Right Sizing provides recommendations on both technical settings for AWS services and cost optimization, including eliminating unused IT resources. Finally, AWS Budgets allows you to set a budget and be notified in the event of an overrun.

Like AWS, Microsoft’s cloud integrates a series of cost management services. First, Azure is equipped with a calculator to estimate the amount to be committed according to the architectures and bricks chosen. It is the equivalent of the AWS Pricing Calculator. Like AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management For its part, consolidates the resources consumed and the associated expenses within a unified dashboard. Among its differentiating points, the tool does not only monitor Azure costs, it also allows you to manage those of AWS by connecting to the latter’s APIs. Another advantage, Microsoft’s Power BI data visualization application connects to Azure Cost Management, opening up the possibility of creating personalized dashboards.

Source : Journaldunet