Table of Contents
- Summary
- Market Categories and Deployment Types
- Key Criteria Comparison
- GigaOm Radar
- Vendor Insights
- Analyst’s Take
- Methodology
- About Dana Hernandez
- About GigaOm
- Copyright
1. Summary
In modern IT environments, hybrid and multicloud infrastructures are now the norm, but runaway costs due to unmonitored growth and unanticipated spend have emerged as a major challenge. Enterprise finance departments are currently unable to do accurate cost breakdowns of cloud spends to the correct cost centers, and there’s no transparency in monthly billing and no accurate forecast of future spend. As a result, many organizations pay for services, resources, and licenses that they don’t use or need.
Cloud FinOps encompasses cloud financial management, an approach centered on bringing finance, business, engineering, and IT teams into closer alignment on cloud spend—the term “FinOps” in this case is viewed as a blend of “finance” and “DevOps” rather than traditional “financial operations.” The goal is to ensure that cloud spending aligns with business objectives and strategic initiatives, and the focus is on efficiency, optimization, and continuous improvement.
Cloud FinOps differs from the traditional IT procurement CapEx model. Instead of finance allocating budgets to product teams, a cross-functional FinOps team (or cloud center of excellence) coordinates technology, business, and finance to optimize cloud vendor management, service rates, and discounting. This helps organizations better understand the tradeoffs between cost, speed, and quality, which ultimately allows them to gain financial control, drive predictability, and enable faster product delivery while reducing issues.
Cloud FinOps is more than just processes and procedures; it also embodies culture, mindset, and best practices adopted at all levels of the organization. It’s all about establishing financial accountability in cloud spending.
This GigaOm Radar report highlights key FinOps tools vendors and equips IT decision-makers with the information needed to select the best fit for their business and use case requirements. In the corresponding GigaOm report “Key Criteria for Evaluating FinOps Solutions,” we describe in more detail the key features and metrics used to evaluate vendors in this market.
How to Read this Report
This GigaOm report is one of a series of documents that helps IT organizations assess competing solutions in the context of well-defined features and criteria. For a fuller understanding, consider reviewing the following reports:
Key Criteria report: A detailed market sector analysis that assesses the impact that key product features and criteria have on top-line solution characteristics—such as scalability, performance, and TCO—that drive purchase decisions.
GigaOm Radar report: A forward-looking analysis that plots the relative value and progression of vendor solutions along multiple axes based on strategy and execution. The Radar report includes a breakdown of each vendor’s offering in the sector.