Even amid economic uncertainty, investing in the cloud has not slowed down. In fact, according to a recent survey of business and technology leaders, 85% plan on increasing their cloud spend over the previous year.[1] The downside? Only 15% of organizations can establish a clear relationship between their investments in the cloud and the delivery of business value.[2]

Why the big gap? Because without visibility on cloud spend and procurement, it’s nearly impossible for data leaders like you to confidently forecast and plan cloud budgets. Let’s take a look at why managing cloud costs can be so tough.

The Challenge of Cloud Cost Management

While cutting costs is a key driver to adopting cloud technologies, the complexity of cloud environments can often lead to overspending. From DevOps to data scientists, teams often purchase cloud resources without even considering existing contracts or pricing models. Plus, easy access to cloud resources provides a quick and straightforward way to resolve performance problems, without even giving cost implications a second thought.

This can lead to costs quickly adding up. It can also result in poor spending visibility, inaccurate forecasts and inefficient operations if you don’t take the time to optimize your data management platform. Not ideal in today’s economic climate.

Bottom line: The lack of visibility and control over cloud spending can prevent data leaders from effectively managing costs and consumption. One way around this is having the right tools and best practices in place. This is where a FinOps-powered data management platform like Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud™ (IDMC) comes in. Let’s explore this concept.

Unlocking Cloud Efficiency With FinOps and Data Management Capabilities

Cloud financial operations, or FinOps, is a financial management practice that addresses these challenges by focusing on balancing cost, usage and organizational needs to optimize the value derived from cloud services. This multidisciplinary approach involves collaboration between technology, business and finance teams.

According to the FinOps Foundation, there are three phases of the FinOps lifecycle: inform, optimize and operate.[3] Let’s review the capabilities AI-driven data management plays in supporting your FinOps activities.

1. Inform: The inform phase emphasizes providing visibility to stakeholders about various workloads, cloud ecosystems and associated costs. Having a data management platform that offers capabilities such as data observability, metadata management and master data management can help by providing transparency into cloud resource consumption and facilitate business value realization.
2. Optimize: In the optimize phase, organizations forecast and plan cloud usage to minimize costs and maximize value. Data management solutions play a vital role in democratizing data for analytics, modeling cloud utilization scenarios and ensuring data quality. Capabilities like data catalog and marketplace, data quality checks and data integration can empower better decision-making for optimal business value.
3. Operate: The operate phase involves managing day-to-day cloud infrastructure activities. Data management services such as data governance, metadata management and advanced data integration can help streamline cloud provisioning and configuration. These tools help ensure consistent policies, automate resource classification and optimize cloud resource utilization, which help enhance operational efficiency.

Not surprisingly, key stakeholders across your organization can reap the rewards of data management for FinOps. For example, executive teams can prioritize investments, adapt to changing market conditions and maintain operational alignment. Finance teams can gain insights into costs, negotiate contracts and capitalize on discount programs. And data engineering and DevOps teams can incorporate cost considerations into pipeline design.

Thriving in the Cloud Era With FinOps-Powered Data Management

Managing cloud costs in a dynamic economy requires a robust FinOps approach, backed by an end-to-end data management platform. By implementing FinOps practices and leveraging a data management platform, organizations can gain visibility, optimize value and achieve operational agility — must haves in a competitive landscape.

By following the inform, optimize and operate phases of FinOps and integrating a sound data management framework, you can navigate the complex cloud landscape more effectively, resulting in increased business value and reduced costs. In a crowded market, adopting the right FinOps and data management strategy is a sure path to effectively compete in today’s digital economy.

From Cloud Chaos to Financial Control: Harnessing IDMC for Effective FinOps

Are you ready to foster financial accountability and transparency across your organization? Learn how FinOps-powered IDMC can help you better monitor, measure and manage your cloud costs.

[1] https://www.unisys.com/cloud-intelligence-report-2023/

[2] https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-finops-way-how-to-avoid-the-pitfalls-to-realizing-clouds-value

[3] https://www.finops.org/framework/phases/