This is the fifth and final part of this FinOps series, The Operate Phase. If you have missed any of my previous blogs, here is a list of posts in the series: Note: I am ex-AWS, so you will notice a lot more focus on AWS tools and services as examples here, however we are cloud agnostic and all cloud providers have similar services and tools.

Wherever you are on your cloud journey, you’re likely under pressure to cut or at least control your cloud spend. You may be undertaking “quick fix” cost cutting tactics such as turning off resources or moving workloads to cheaper services. But, as you may be finding out, tactical, reactive cost management activities generally only work for the short term and do not solve systemic inefficiencies that only increase over time if not addressed.

Our solution (Anodot) and CloudZero are popular choices regarding third-party solutions for businesses managing cloud costs, adapting a FinOps approach to make their cloud operations more efficient. That’s why a platform that can effectively support a FinOps model has become necessary for optimizing cloud functionality. Let’s analyze and dive deeper into who offers the best solutions, technology, and support to take your FinOps culture in the cloud to the next level.

FinOps is beginning to take the enterprise by storm, but many enterprise IT leaders may be taking too narrow a view and risk falling into a trap. There’s a good reason for this upswing in FinOps attention: runaway cloud costs are becoming a significant challenge for enterprise IT leaders, particularly as they move legacy workloads to the cloud in earnest.

FinOps is an evolving concept increasingly practiced in cloud computing organizations to manage and optimize their infrastructure cost. It requires team collaboration among Finance, Engineering and IT Operations to gain a deep understanding of the expenditure, take financial accountability, and make informed decisions to maximize the business performance.

As companies continue to invest, adopt, and grow into cloud, as well as manage a strong public and hybrid cloud environment, it is very important to understand what are the common pain points of their sub-organizations.

Getting engineers to take action to optimize spending can feel like an eternal struggle for many cloud-based companies. In fact, this particular issue is consistently considered to be one of the number-one cost challenges modern companies face. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way. Below are a few creative ways companies have gamified FinOps practices to make the learning process more interesting and rewarding for engineers.