A recent article lured me in by saying FinOps was failing and a fundamental change in approach is urgently needed. It pushed an argument that GreenOps was the route to success, stating that sustainability is a greater influence on engineers than cost.
The provocation in the CIO.com piece was that FinOps neglects stakeholders, emphasises short-term cost cutting, tools and controls. An immediate reaction is to refute these claims, but perhaps they are a useful trigger for FinOps to cogitate over.
More that unites than divides?
There are many roles that seek efficacy in technology governance – ITAM, governance and risk, compliance, SecOps, procurement to name a few. FinOps and GreenOps share that stable. Each contributes to nebulous aims such as ‘aligning with strategy’, ‘enhancing competitive advantage or driving any combination of performance, transformation, communication, efficiency, innovation etc. Regardless of the corporate buzzwords and functional monikers, there are similar needs. A loose ‘5 As’ initialism could be applied:
- Acknowledgement – that focus on a topic is deserved
- Alignment – to the organisational direction
- Approach – workable for multiple stakeholder groups
- Analysis – either being enabled or delivered to support decision making and actions
- Agency – facilitating a feeling of self-determination for those involved and impacted
With so much commonality, it is egregious when divisions are promoted, or success criteria are denigrated. FinOps should be hailed for promoting commercially awareness and enhancing financial discipline. At the same time GreenOps can be lauded for influencing the ESG (environmental, social and governance) agenda. If a sustainability perspective has greater currency for engineers than cost, celebrate and use that in FinOps and other endeavours.
That is where umbrage at the FinOps critique comes in:
- Current core and allied persona modelling may not be perfect, but it shows engagement with a range of participants and observers is a key tenet. FinOps clearly focuses on the need for collaboration, and highlights the importance of stimulation and influence.
- Cost cutting is a headline result and a common driver for FinOps. That is because runaway expenditure is often how the first A – acknowledgement – is arrived at. Like ITAM before it, FinOps is rarely backed simply because it is a good thing to do. Unexpected bills usually inspire more reaction than latent cost management deficiencies. Whatever the initial mandate, FinOps is there to maximise the ongoing value of cloud computing and technology use.
- It is similar for the short-termism accusation. Stemming unnecessary expenditure is an expected reaction to spiralling costs. It does not need to stifle innovation. Rapid results, for example from reviewing lift and shift migrations, may colour the perception of FinOps as a ‘one and done’ play. After all, it makes sense to treat the biggest or most obvious pain quickly. That can be used to demonstrate the potential for ongoing value, such as monitored cloud adoption.
- FinOps is not obsessed with tooling. Without insight from data analysis, informed decisions are a pipe dream. Cloud consumption creates huge amounts of consumption and billing data which is impossible to process without tools. The same applies to GreenOps in carbon accounting and sustainability reporting.
- Granted, it is possible to have analysis overkill. That is where more mature organisations refine tagging, unit economics values and exception reporting. With respect to automating activities and controls, there are big differences between curtailing underutilised sources of significant cost and having tolerances to enable the agility of critical systems.
Instead of battling for supremacy, FinOps and GreenOps et al. should align on common goals. What differentiates functions is the angle of approach and success criteria. Which blend and scale an organisation should apply has many influences, including:
- Existing structures, cultures, systems, spend profiles, processes and technical debt.
- Internal perspectives on criticality, capability, ambitions, politics, budgets and appetite to make a change.
- Changes in external obligations or operating environments, as well as marketplace and commercial shocks.
- Projected spending and deployment changes and unexpected variations in consumption patterns.
An aside on GreenOps
It is easy to support the ESG and sustainability principles, so long as it is not simply greenwashing. GreenOps can enable compliance with regulation, demonstrate leadership and motivate decision making. From a non-expert perspective, the challenges faced extend beyond securing investment and cultural adoption:
- As much as doing the right thing is important, business demands often supersede. Energy efficient design may be swept aside if time to value and cost to implement are increased. Sometimes a pragmatic route might be advisable, analogous to FinOps witnessing an inefficient cloud deployment and seeking to demonstrate the benefits of improvement afterwards.
- Enterprise architects and engineers have finite time. FinOps has a natural seat at the planning table – cost optimisation is in all cloud architecture frameworks. GreenOps requires additional skills and adds complexity to design and planning. At best, it will take time for this appended thinking to be embedded; at worst, it may be jettisoned as an impediment to agility.
- Carbon impact tools have evolved but have reliability questions. There are compelling critiques of reporting on scope 3 emissions (from the supply chain). There is also the question of completeness and allocation of ‘sunk cost’ style impacts from development and building of cloud infrastructures.
In an ideal world, GreenOps will contribute proactively to decision making and provide insights on potential for improvement. This complementary to FinOps, rather than an adversary. On the most basic level consuming less resource means lower cost and environmental impact.
Lessons for FinOps
What does this mean for FinOps practitioners? Primarily it is a good reminder to have situational awareness. Going back to the ‘5 As’:
- Acknowledgement – just because a FinOps practitioner believes something is right, they should not assume others do. Consider what is in it for senior management, technical teams and allied persona groups. For example, rather than pitching cost savings, highlight the potential to find greater capacity for development.
- Alignment – what objective or initiative is FinOps supporting driving towards? Getting the positioning right improves the perceived urgency or importance of your ideas. If there is messaging about the economic environment from senior leadership, then highlighting the potential of removing redundancy may land well. If there is a focus on understanding, then show-back or allocation may work better.
- Approach – you may see huge potential efficiencies but be unaware of the context. Remain cognisant that others might have a more informed view or more optimal way of dealing with a scenario. For example, an underutilised production resource may relate to an imminent product launch or scaling of throughput. A lower cost alternative technology may exist, but a switch may create compatibility or security issues. Arbitrage opportunity of switching to another cloud provider may have prohibitive enablement implications.
- Analysis – FinOps can provide incredible new insights and data-driven decision making. It is the context makes information valuable. Collaboration allows meaningful triage and appraisal. To be viable, the volume of suggestions should be kept to a manageable level, with thresholds set for alerts, exceptions and advisory notices.
- Agency – FinOps should assume a servant leader/facilitator role. Preaching and demanding does not translate to motivation. The clearest instruction with demonstrable benefit may not engender action. Allowing autonomy builds trust and the likelihood of considered decision making. FinOps can provide guidance and coaching on good practices. Feeding selective information can spark ideas for those at the sharp end, such a plan to migrate to a more efficient service that an engineer learnt of from a technical digest.
Conclusion
FinOps has huge potential to contribute to the efficacy of investments in technology. It is well positioned to promote collaboration by providing visibility, insights and support. However, FinOps is not an island and should link with GreenOps and other governance, enablement and technical pillars in the organisational ecosystem.
FinOps will not succeed where others fail or vice versa – together is where opportunities turn into outcomes and potential is transformed to value.
What is your perspective? What challenges are you addressing? Feel free to connect to discuss how FinOps can work for you.
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