In partnership with
What happened this week:
AWS Case Study about Saving $2M with FinOps
FOCUS Adoption on Vendors
Mention of Honour to remember is not only about Cost Reduction
Job Offers
Professional Spotlight with a Post of Community Favourites
Stuff is back after summer. We survived. Enjoy yourself:
Collaborate with FinOps Weekly
AWS
How to Save $2M in AWS with FinOps
Infor, a global software provider, saved $2 million with smart cloud strategies. Let’s see how they did it:
The Challenge with Costs: Infor had trouble managing over 10K AWS EC2 instances. They needed a way to lower their operational costs.
Identifying Opportunities: Using Amazon Cost and Usage reports, they found expensive, unused resources on AWS services.
Cost Monitoring with Dashboards: Built a central dashboard with Amazon QuickSight that helped monitor and control all AWS costs effectively.
Automation Strategies: Used AWS Lambda to clean up unused resources.
Migration and Optimization: Migrated EBS volumes to save over $1M annually. Used AWS Compute Optimizer to right-size EC2 instances.
Storage Savings: Removed 10 TB of unused Amazon S3 storage and saved $15K monthly through storage optimizations.
Logging and Retention Adjustments: Adjusted AWS CloudTrail logs to reduce costs to save an extra $17K monthly by optimizing log usage.
Infor’s FinOps strategy saved them over $2.3 million!
In partnership with FinOpsly
AI Copilot for FinOps
End-to-End FinOps.
Data at the speed of thought.
FinOps Empowered by AI.
FinOpsly’s AI-powered platform helps optimize your cloud cost and performance by understanding the unique complexities of your cloud infrastructure.
Cloud Providers
Lidl’s Cloud to Rival Amazon, Google
Lidl’s parent company, Schwarz Group, has entered the tech world. They’re now competing with companies like Amazon and Google in cloud services.
Started as a solution for their own needs in 2021.
Now offering cloud and cybersecurity services.
Major clients include SAP and Bayern Munich.
Data is stored only in Germany and Austria.
7,500 people work at the IT branch, Schwarz Digits.
Annual sales for the unit reached €1.9 billion.
They acquired XM Cyber for better security.
Invested in AI tech company, Aleph Alpha.
Lidl is not just about groceries anymore.
FOCUS
FinOps Vendors FOCUS Adoption
Many tool vendors are now adopting FOCUS to help organizations manage cloud costs better. The FinOps Foundation tracks vendors using FOCUS to help practitioners.
FOCUS Conformance Certification will ensure alignment with the standards. Evaluation criteria are being defined for certification. Vendors can gain certification for using FOCUS properly.
FinOps practitioners and vendors should get familiar with FOCUS!
Hackathons
FinOps Hackathon yields $100k Savings
The FunOps Hackathon shared by Stijn wrapped up with impressive achievements. Here’s what happened along the way:
Focused sessions aligned everyone on goals. The virtual chat room buzzed with collaboration and updates. High energy kept the momentum strong.
Achieved over $100,000 in annual savings. Success set a new benchmark for collaboration. Tagging improvements kickstarted new hygiene processes.
Overcame tagging challenges with determination. Preparation was key to the hackathon’s success.
Hackathon built strong bridges between teams. Relationships will help tackle future challenges.
Cloud Waste
Cut Cloud Waste with Visibility, Accountability & Automation
There’s a surprising amount of money wasted on cloud services worldwide! Companies can save millions by focusing on three principles: visibility, accountability, and automation. Here’s how:
Visibility
Cloud’s convenience makes spending hard to track. Therefore, many companies struggle to align budgets. However, tools like resource tagging provide transparency.
Accountability
Cloud costs often lack dedicated oversight. FinOps teams manage budgets and control costs. They set budgets and ensure efficient engineering practices.
Automation
Manual cost management is inefficient in today’s cloud world. AI and automation help identify and cut waste. Tools like “intelligent auto-stopping” save resources.
These principles are key to controlling cloud spending. Great post!
FinOps Adoption
FinOps growth in Japan; early adoption, gov push.
J.R. Storment shared insights from his recent trip to Japan, exploring the FinOps market. Here are key takeaways from his trip:
FinOps adoption is still early but growing.
Systems Integrators are crucial for technical expertise.
Engineering and Finance teams have collaboration barriers.
The Japanese government drives a Cloud First strategy.
Current cloud adoption feels like the US in 2017.
Japan is preparing for growth in cloud spending.
Japan is on its way to FinOps!
Mention of Honour presented by FinOpsly
End-to-End FinOps. Data at the speed of thought. FinOps Empowered by AI.
FinOpsly’s AI-powered platform helps optimize your cloud cost and performance by understanding the unique complexities of your cloud infrastructure.
Deserved for recent discoveries that are inspiring for the FinOps community.
🎖️ Mention of Honour
Why Cutting Costs is Expensive
Eric Elliott explores how cutting costs can lead to greater expenses, analyzing the case of Boeing.
Boeing used $9/hour engineers for the 737 Max project. This led to software problems in airplanes. These issues contributed to two fatal accidents.
Faulty software due to cost-cutting caused major issues. The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) malfunctioned. The Boeing 737 Max had to be grounded worldwide.
Relying on cheap labor often results in bigger expenses. Boeing’s cost-saving tactics damaged its reputation. The company lost billions due to its mistakes.
Investing in skilled engineers can prevent future mishaps.
Companies should learn from Boeing’s costly errors.
Remember that FinOps is not just cost-cutting. It’s getting the most value out of every dollar in Cloud
👩🏭 FinOps Job offers
I’ll find both Permanent links (i.e. FinOps Job site) and Offers on the internet.
Professional Spotlight
FinOps Community Favourites
I asked the community which ones were their favorites and got several names in them. I’ll be adding them sequentially to each edition and talk a bit about them. In the meantime, find them all in the original post!
🏆 Quick Wins
Announcements
Cloud Run adds NVIDIA GPUs for fast AI inference.
FinOps Adventures for Kids Book released by Wiv.ai
Articles
Necessary data points for Cost Analysis with AI by FinOps Scribbler
Azure FinOps Essentials: Optimizing Non-Prod Environments
FOCUS can help Engineers take action by Anderson Oliveira
🗳️ Poll of the Week
Want SOC 2 compliance without the Security Theater?
Tired of SOC 2 Security Theater? 🤔
Oneleet is the all-in-one platform for building a real-world Security Program, getting a Penetration Test, integrating with a 3rd Party Auditor, and providing the Compliance Automation Software.
That’s all for this week. See you next Sunday!
If you like the content, you can subscribe to receive it every week.
Let’s Collaborate!
Connect on Linkedin: I share valuable free content there. I am open to chatting with anybody interested in Cloud & FinOps.
Set up a Free Discovery Call: Let’s discuss how we can collaborate.
Sponsor this newsletter: Promote your company in this newsletter and reach the Cloud audience that wants to maximize business value and reduce costs.
PS1: Know someone who’ll enjoy this newsletter? Please forward it. You’ll make FinOps grow bigger.
PS2: Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here and get all editions!
PS3: I’ll do my best to provide you with the best content. However, some of it may slip. If you think something should have been included, please reach out on LinkedIn or REPLY to this email.