🌐 How does FinOps work in a heterogeneous cloud environment? 🚀

Hey everyone,

I'm diving into the world of FinOps and exploring its role in managing cloud costs, particularly when dealing with a heterogeneous cloud business - where you have resources spread across different cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.) or services. I know that FinOps is all about visibility, accountability, and optimization, but I'm curious about how it adapts when you have multiple cloud environments in the mix.

I've heard that FinOps often works well with the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule), where 80% of costs come from 20% of resources. In this context, that seems like it would be pretty powerful in identifying the high-cost resources that need attention.

But how do you balance this approach when managing a heterogeneous cloud landscape? Does FinOps provide a solid framework for tracking, allocating, and optimizing costs across different providers? 🤔

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Specifically:

• What tools or strategies do you use to get cost visibility across multiple cloud providers?

• How have you implemented the Pareto Principle (80/20) for cost optimization in a multi-cloud or hybrid setup?

• What challenges have you faced when aligning FinOps across different cloud environments?

Looking forward to your insights! 🚀

------------------------------
Ajay R
Technical Instructor
IBM
Bengaluru KA
------------------------------

Hello, @Ajay R.

The first step would be collecting the data from all (three) providers into a repository or tool. This has to be done periodically. An Apptio tool like Cloudability (CLDY) can do that, given the appropriate permissions. CLDY handles the different products offered by the various providers pretty well.

We don't have CLDY, but we still collect the data into Apptio Cost Transparency.

Next, you need to be able to map the cloud costs to something like accounts, applications, etc. In general, you can do it with information coming from the billing data (e.g. Account Name/ID or something similar). That will give you an insight as to who is spending what money in the cloud. In some cases, you might need tagging information provided by the developers or the provisioning software, depending on your setup. 

In our case, we map accounts in GCP and AWS to Applications, and then follow the regular cost model allocation paths to Business Services and Business Units. For Azure, we leverage tagging data (actually, our FinOps team does that). The result is a breakdown of cloud costs by business owner. CLDY can do this, with some help depending on the setup.

Regarding Pareto, this is up to you, but I wouldn't ignore 20% of the costs. This might well be in the double-digit million range for large cloud spends, and might be difficult to justify to your Finance organization.

I hope this helps.

BTW, maybe this article (link) is helpful.

------------------------------
Regards, Guillermo

Original Message:
Sent: Tue June 03, 2025 01:24 PM
From: Ajay R
Subject: FinOps

🌐 How does FinOps work in a heterogeneous cloud environment? 🚀

Hey everyone,

I'm diving into the world of FinOps and exploring its role in managing cloud costs, particularly when dealing with a heterogeneous cloud business - where you have resources spread across different cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.) or services. I know that FinOps is all about visibility, accountability, and optimization, but I'm curious about how it adapts when you have multiple cloud environments in the mix.

I've heard that FinOps often works well with the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule), where 80% of costs come from 20% of resources. In this context, that seems like it would be pretty powerful in identifying the high-cost resources that need attention.

But how do you balance this approach when managing a heterogeneous cloud landscape? Does FinOps provide a solid framework for tracking, allocating, and optimizing costs across different providers? 🤔

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Specifically:

• What tools or strategies do you use to get cost visibility across multiple cloud providers?

• How have you implemented the Pareto Principle (80/20) for cost optimization in a multi-cloud or hybrid setup?

• What challenges have you faced when aligning FinOps across different cloud environments?

Looking forward to your insights! 🚀

------------------------------
Ajay R
Technical Instructor
IBM
Bengaluru KA
------------------------------

Hello, @Ajay R.

The first step would be collecting the data from all (three) providers into a repository or tool. This has to be done periodically. An Apptio tool like Cloudability (CLDY) can do that, given the appropriate permissions. CLDY handles the different products offered by the various providers pretty well.

We don't have CLDY, but we still collect the data into Apptio Cost Transparency.

Next, you need to be able to map the cloud costs to something like accounts, applications, etc. In general, you can do it with information coming from the billing data (e.g. Account Name/ID or something similar). That will give you an insight as to who is spending what money in the cloud. In some cases, you might need tagging information provided by the developers or the provisioning software, depending on your setup. 

In our case, we map accounts in GCP and AWS to Applications, and then follow the regular cost model allocation paths to Business Services and Business Units. For Azure, we leverage tagging data (actually, our FinOps team does that). The result is a breakdown of cloud costs by business owner. CLDY can do this, with some help depending on the setup.

Regarding Pareto, this is up to you, but I wouldn't ignore 20% of the costs. This might well be in the double-digit million range for large cloud spends, and might be difficult to justify to your Finance organization.

I hope this helps.

BTW, maybe this article (link) is helpful.

------------------------------
Regards, Guillermo

Original Message:
Sent: Tue June 03, 2025 01:24 PM
From: Ajay R
Subject: FinOps

🌐 How does FinOps work in a heterogeneous cloud environment? 🚀

Hey everyone,

I'm diving into the world of FinOps and exploring its role in managing cloud costs, particularly when dealing with a heterogeneous cloud business - where you have resources spread across different cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc.) or services. I know that FinOps is all about visibility, accountability, and optimization, but I'm curious about how it adapts when you have multiple cloud environments in the mix.

I've heard that FinOps often works well with the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule), where 80% of costs come from 20% of resources. In this context, that seems like it would be pretty powerful in identifying the high-cost resources that need attention.

But how do you balance this approach when managing a heterogeneous cloud landscape? Does FinOps provide a solid framework for tracking, allocating, and optimizing costs across different providers? 🤔

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Specifically:

• What tools or strategies do you use to get cost visibility across multiple cloud providers?

• How have you implemented the Pareto Principle (80/20) for cost optimization in a multi-cloud or hybrid setup?

• What challenges have you faced when aligning FinOps across different cloud environments?

Looking forward to your insights! 🚀

------------------------------
Ajay R
Technical Instructor
IBM
Bengaluru KA
------------------------------