In partnership with
I’d love to bring you more variance about providers but these people owned the space this week. Tons of updates below.
What also happened this week:
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Wiz Case Study on Applying FinOps
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AWS updates on RI & SP Resellers Policy
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WebSockets cost Recall.ai $1M. FinOps fixed that.
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Mention of Honour: New FinOps Book
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Professional Spotlight with the FinOps Machine of AWS
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Quick Wins with tons of updates from the community and providers
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Professional Spotlight with the AWS FinOps Master.
Rick Ochs & Team, please don’t release something while I’m writing this newsletter.
Action Items: Read today’s newsletter, and join our Telegram Community
Collaborate with FinOps Weekly
AWS
FinOps Updates from AWS: Brace Yourself
I hope they don’t release anything else while I’m writing this newsletter. These people are putting in the work to improve the FinOps capabilities missing in the platform. Here are the major updates from the CSP:
Savings Plan Purchase Analyzer
AWS has introduced a new tool called Savings Plans Purchase Analyzer. This tool helps customers make smarter decisions when buying Savings Plans for their AWS usage. The analyzer lets you choose a specific time period to look at your usage data, exclude Savings Plans that will expire soon, and try out different purchase amounts to see how they affect your costs and coverage.
You can use this tool to plan for renewing Savings Plans that are ending. Also, you can see how different purchase amounts impact your savings and get recommendations based on your recent usage patterns.
Move to CUR 2.0: Optimize AWS cost reporting!
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has added new features to its Cloud Intelligence Dashboard for Azure. These updates help customers see and manage costs across both AWS and Microsoft Azure cloud services in one place. The new features use a standard called FOCUS (FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification). FOCUS makes it easier to compare costs from different cloud providers.
There are more AWS updates in the Quick Wins Section, regarding AWS Idle resource optimization and Aurora Serverless. I told you, they put in the work this week.
In partnership with FinOut
Wiz transforms with these FinOps Practices
Wiz, a major cybersecurity company, faced a big problem. They use many cloud services and need better management of their costs. Wiz chose FinOut to help solve the issue. Here’s what it did for them:
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Made one simple dashboard to show all cloud costs.
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Created custom reports for different teams.
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Linked every dollar spent to specific goals
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Saved lots of time analyzing costs.
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Gave the cost management team extra help.
Ron Tzrouya from Wiz says it’s like having another team member. The tool helps Wiz handle big changes quickly as they grow. The solution lets Wiz see all their cloud costs in one place. Teams can now get the exact information they need without long meetings or confusing spreadsheets. This partnership helps Wiz manage costs while growing fast in the competitive cloud security market.
Cost Optimization
WebSockets Cost This Company $1M
Recall.ai found that using WebSockets for their meeting bot platform on AWS was costing them an extra $1 million per year. The company processes large amounts of video data for bots on platforms like Zoom and Google Meet. When analyzing their system, they discovered WebSockets were using much more CPU than expected for sending and receiving data.
To reduce costs, Recall.ai looked at alternatives like TCP/IP and Unix Domain Sockets. They decided to create a custom transport using a ring buffer structure to move data more efficiently. This new approach cut CPU usage of their bots by up to 50% and saved over $1 million annually on AWS costs. Some experts noted there were existing options like Chromium’s Mojo system that could have worked. Others suggested using pub/sub instead of WebSockets for real-time applications.
Community
Join FinOps Global Community
We are close to 200 members in our FinOps Global Community on Telegram. Would you like to get that special number?
Enjoy interesting, unfiltered discussions about the FinOps ecosystem, a Q&A Space for the community, learning resources, community calls & a FinOps Bot to answer your questions
FinOps X
FinOps XE Keynotes Days 1 & 2 (Official)
FinOps Foundation has released the Keynotes for Days 1 & 2 for public availability. Some key points:
Day 1
FinOps is becoming more central to both technology and business strategy. It’s helping connect high-level decisions to on-the-ground implementation. The scope of FinOps is growing beyond just public cloud costs. Teams are now applying FinOps methods to areas like software licenses and data centers.
Day 2
A panel discussed the connection between cloud costs and sustainability. They talked about showing carbon data alongside cost data to help teams make better choices when building applications.
Renault shared how they reduced cloud costs by 24 times over three years after setting up a FinOps team. STMicroelectronics explained how they’re using the new FOCUS standard to combine data from different cloud providers. This has made their processes simpler. A group of experts who helped create FOCUS talked about their work on the standard. They shared stories about the challenges they faced, like agreeing on names for new concepts.
Commitments & Resellers
AWS Savings Plan and Reserved Instance Policy Changes for Resellers
AWS is changing how Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans (SPs) work for resellers. Right now, some companies buy RIs and SPs in bulk. They then share the savings with their customers. AWS is stopping this practice. This is a big change in how AWS works with resellers. It could cause problems for some companies that resell AWS services.
After June 1, 2025, companies can’t share these savings across different customers. Each customer will need to buy their own RIs and SPs to get savings. This change affects companies that buy and resell AWS services and customers who get AWS through these resellers. Why is AWS doing this? AWS wants more control over discounts. They also want to reduce the power of big resellers. This change could make AWS more money.
What should you do: If you buy AWS directly, you don’t need to do anything. If you use a reseller, talk to them about your options.
🎖️ Mention of Honour
FinOps Book: Scaling Cloud FinOps
This book provides strategies for managing cloud costs and implementing effective FinOps practices in organizations. Some insights about the book:
The #Piggy-Bank Framework – An approach to cloud cost governance that helps streamline reporting, provisioning, and resource management. The 6-factor formula for cloud cost management covers areas like resource optimization, cost allocation, and vendor management.
The book aims to help professionals in cloud, IT, finance, and procurement roles improve their cloud financial management. It provides practical guidance for both beginners and experienced practitioners to maximize the business value of cloud investments.
🏆 Quick Wins
Announcements
AWS Aurora Serverless V2 finally lives up to its name
AWS announcing Idle Recommendations in AWS Compute Optimizer
Articles & Podcasts
FinOps in Healthcare: Enhance Cloud Financial Management
Optimizing Microsoft EA Renewals & True-Ups with Enhanced FinOps and SAM Collaboration
Deploy the Cost Optimizer for Amazon WorkSpaces in a highly regulated environment.
Why Cloud Economics is the answer to the AI innovation/cost conundrum
How to do FinOps in a 100,000+ Employee Company with Narciso Cerezo (BBVA)
Professional Spotlight
Rick Ochs
AWS FinOps Machine
From giving a set of amazing talks in FinOps XE, this guy just released together with his team a couple of great AWS features regarding FinOps. Put alerts on his LinkedIn profile so as not to miss anything.
That’s all for this week. See you next Sunday!
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