Cloud usage optimization / optimized expense management / FinOps - an essential step to managing multi and hybrid clouds at scale (2023 Prediction #1)

Despite the global economic issues, PAC continues to see significant growth year-on-year (YoY) for public cloud services as organizations transition gradually to hybrid and multi-cloud operating models. In all its forms, cloud computing is seen as a catalyst for business innovation as applications are modified or rearchitected entirely when migrated to the cloud. It can be argued that even more so, the cloud is seen by CxOs as a cost optimization operating model through the switch to on-demand consumption rather than technology being a long-term depreciated asset.

However, cost optimization requires fastidious, if not ruthless, attention to financial detail in determining the optimal cost model for each cloud service consumed by an organization for single use or a composite part of a broader business service. The cloud consumption model for a project is often determined by the technical needs identified by developers and architects with no, or very limited, input from finance specialists. This leads to situations where a business solution is delivered that meets an organization's technical demands but has not been cost-optimized upfront. It is either cost inefficient or, at worst, too expensive to operate for the business value provided.

As both DevOps and SecOps evolved to fill the voids of operational inefficiency for development and security teams, the role of FinOps for integrating finance insight in the agile workflow is starting to occur in 2022. Where the growth of FinOps is rising to meet the demand to be effective at cost optimization across highly complex IT estates spanning multiple cloud services. PAC predicts that starting in 2023, the adoption of FinOps by organizations, and the underlying IT tools required, will accelerate to ensure that financial insight is incorporated at the point of the inception of a project through to operational deployment. FinOps, by including finance specialists in a project's agile workflows, ensures that the financial implications of using a range of cloud services are embedded as a continuously assessed behavior rather than an afterthought.

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This blog is part of a series of PAC's 2023 Top 10 predictions