Setting up a FinOps team

For starters: FinOps is not about saving money in cloud, but about making money with cloud. Hence, it’s tightly integrated into business planning and the forthcoming architecture. FinOps has proven to be a must to stay in control with the entrance of cloud and DevOps. The challenge is evident: where engineers used to order physical equipment and had to go through a financial approval process to get that equipment delivered to a data center, now they can get that virtual equipment with a click of a button. However, although the equipment is virtual and basically just a piece of code deploying a resource in the cloud, it still costs money. The main difference is that companies shift from CAPEX to OPEX.

CAPEX – capital expenditure – concerns upfront investments; for example, in buying physical machines or software licenses. These are often one-off investments, of which the value is depreciated over an economic life cycle. OPEX – operational...