As organizations increasingly adopt cloud services to power their digital transformation, FinOps has become crucial to deliver insight as well as optimizing and controlling cloud costs. FinOps within organizations also support the alignment of cloud strategy with sustainability goals, optimizing both cost efficiency and environmental impact.
An ever-growing cloud
Cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses operate and the adoption of cloud is growing significantly. Predications are that developments such as Gen AI will continue the growth for years to come. Gen AI offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, allowing companies to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure management. However, rapid adoption comes with challenges and consequences, both from a cost perspective as well as a sustainability standpoint as cloud data centers consume significant amounts of energy and water and contribute to carbon emissions.
Back to the beginning
As organizations started adopting FinOps, the first phase of adoption was “inform.” This helped to identify data sources for cloud cost, usage, and efficiency data. This information could then be allocated, analyzed, and reported. This is also the first step in aligning your FinOps and GreenOps approach. The good news here is that much of the pre-work of the FinOps function can be recycled as there is a significant overlap in data sources and reporting structure. However, it is key to align further with the sustainability function to define the additional needs and potentially new stakeholders that need to be serviced by the GreenOps function. As before, this is the basis to start building KPI’s for benchmarking and developing metrics that will reveal the business goals to achieve a responsible usage of cloud computing.
The balancing act
Obviously, there are easy wins, such as rightsizing and eliminating waste, that will immediately deliver both savings and sustainability benefits. However, optimizing cloud usage has always been a balancing act. You can’t just look at costs as a decision factor; you want to achieve the right costs while balancing these against other factors, such as performance and security. GreenOps is adding a new dimension to the mix, and a structure is needed to make the right decisions for the organization. Adopting the Well-Architected Framework (WAF) is a highly recommended step for organizations to look at all these factors when defining the right architecture and configuration of the infrastructure needs of a workload. The WAF covers six pillars that need to be balanced:
- Operational excellence
- Security
- Reliability
- Performance efficiency
- Cost optimization
- Sustainability
Incorporating this approach will help to optimize cloud usage and establish a culture of accountability within the organization enabling a long-term roadmap of transformation and continuous improvement across all areas.
Keep it going
“Going green” should not be an exercise to get from sustainability report to sustainability report. It needs to be embedded in your way of working, so it requires implementation and organizational change to operationalize GreenOps using the data and capabilities that the organization has developed, building on the foundations that have been laid by the FinOps practice.
Align the stakeholders within the organization and engage with your public cloud providers to ensure transparency and to drive further improvements in sustainability.
Measure success by defining sustainability metrics that are relevant and enable continuous reporting through unified dashboarding combining financial, performance, environmental, and other KPI’s in a single dashboard. Encourage responsible cloud usage, empowering individuals by developing training programs, team guidelines, and automation policies aligned with organizational objectives.
A more sustainable cloud
The convergence of FinOps and GreenOps is essential for organizations seeking to align their cloud strategy with their sustainability goals. By leveraging the investments into FinOps, organizations can quickly deliver on their sustainability objectives. By enabling a culture of ownership and monitoring clear KPI’s, organizations can build a greener, more cost-efficient cloud ecosystem. Capgemini supports organizations to execute this by combining our knowledge of FinOps, Sustainability, and Organizational change into a joint and practical step-by-step approach. The journey toward more sustainable cloud operations is ongoing; a commitment to responsible practices will drive positive change.
Looking to go deeper into Sustainable FinOps? Check out our Sustainable FinOps Page and the Point of View on – A leaner , greener future in the Cloud.
Sources:
AWS Well-Architected – Build secure, efficient cloud applications (amazon.com)
Please reach out to me through LinkedIn if you have any queries relating to FinOps and Sustainable FinOps. Happy to help!
