Episode 550: J.R. Storment and Mike Fuller on Cloud FinOps (Financial Operations)

J.R. Storment and Mike Fuller
discuss cloud financial operations (FinOps) with host Akshay
Manchale. They consider the importance of a financial operations
strategy for cloud-based infrastructure. J.R. and Mike discuss
the differences between operating your own data center and
running in the cloud, as well as the problems that doing so
creates in understanding and forecasting cloud spend. Mike
details the Cloud FinOps lifecycle by first attributing
organizational cloud spend through showbacks and chargebacks to
individual teams and products. JR describes the two levers
available for optimization once an organization understands where
they're spending their cloud budget. They discuss complexities
that arise from virtualized infrastructure and techniques to
attribute cloud usage to the correct owners, and close with some
recommendations for engineering leaders who are getting started
on cloud FinOps strategy.