Despite signs of unprecedented cross-functional adoption and endorsement within companies, research highlights challenges impeding FinOps at scale
CloudBolt Software, The Cloud ROI Company™ and a recognized leader in cloud financial management, today released its latest research report, CloudBolt Industry Insights: Focus on FinOps—The Alignment Paradox.
CloudBolt Industry Insights (CII) reports offer an objective and thorough examination of prevalent market trends and opportunities. The latest research, commissioned by CloudBolt and conducted by Wakefield Research, surveyed 900 FinOps leaders and practitioners, DevOps/Engineering, and IT executives across North America from organizations of various sizes and industries. The report explores the progression of FinOps alignment and the gaps that still exist for FinOps teams and stakeholders.
“Our most comprehensive CII report yet shows that the FinOps community has made great strides in driving cultural change and gaining a seat at the table,” said Mark Zembal, Chief Marketing Officer at CloudBolt. “However, while most are moving in the right direction by integrating FinOps practices more deeply within the business, a perplexing and growing divide between FinOps and DevOps/Engineering makes it clear that the journey is not yet complete.”
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Key Findings:
Unprecedented Cross-Functional Alignment
When comparing perceptions among and between FinOps teams, DevOps/Engineering teams, and Executives, all indicated strong alignment across key areas:
- Effectiveness in building a culture of collaboration between FinOps and DevOps (70% deemed it to be “Completely” or “Very” effective)
- FinOps objectives incorporated into cloud engineering teams’ metrics and incentives (65% said they are “Mostly” or “Completely” incorporated)
- FinOps considerations being built into the product engineering lifecycle and processes (84% indicated “Always” or Often”)
- Executive sponsorship and support in aligning FinOps and DevOps/Engineering (88% indicated either “Excellent” or “Very Good”)
Growing Gap Between FinOps and DevOps Despite Perceived Strong Alignment
The research reveals a surprisingly significant—and growing—chasm between the two groups. Eighty-six percent (86%) state that there is still a gap between FinOps and DevOps/Engineering within their organization, and three-quarters indicate it has widened over the past year.
Disconnect in Sharing Cloud Cost Responsibility
One fundamental best practice in FinOps is fostering collaboration among all cloud users to jointly shoulder the responsibility for managing cloud costs. Instead, 63% of executives and 53% of engineers said the responsibility should fall solely on the IT department.
Majority Struggle with “Insight-to-Action” Speed, But Believe AI Will Help
An emerging “Golden Metric” of FinOps effectiveness is the time it takes to act once a cloud cost-related anomaly or opportunity is detected, known as insight-to-action. This survey shows that for most, this process is still significantly delayed. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of respondents encounter delays of days or more in addressing anomalies, while 31% experience even longer delays of weeks or months. Ideally, the goal is to resolve these issues within seconds or minutes. Almost all (91%) believe that augmenting FinOps teams with advanced tooling that integrates AI and ML is crucial to achieve necessary cloud optimization at scale.
Factors Hindering Broader FinOps Adoption Identified
Other key challenges to wider FinOps adoption include skills gaps (37%), different reporting structures (34%), lack of inter-departmental collaboration (33%), organizational silos (33%), and misaligned objectives (33%). The fact that these issues are almost evenly distributed suggests that no single challenge outweighs the others.
The Path To Business Value at Scale Requires More
While the study highlights important strides in uniting FinOps, DevOps/Engineering, and executive teams, the persistent gaps underscore the need for ongoing efforts and vigilance. The answer appears to be organizational, cultural, and technological.
“The community needs to demand more from its FinOps tooling. Enterprise customers require business impact not just awareness and visibility from their FinOps initiatives. Integrating intelligent, AI-driven FinOps tooling with continuous optimization will streamline collaboration across departments and deliver key business outcomes,” said Kyle Campos, Chief Technology and Product Officer at CloudBolt. “It’s time for FinOps teams to look to advanced technology like AI and automation to help them bridge the current gap, relieve operational toil, and increase cloud ROI.”
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