It’s been almost three years since TechNative adopted FinOps and Cloud Financial Management, and during this time, the landscape has evolved significantly. The FinOps market is booming, and what was once overlooked is now a top priority for boards and VC firms.
This surge in demand has led to an abundance of SaaS platforms catering to the growing need for controlling cloud costs. One major trend for 2023 is the rise of Do It Yourself (DIY) tooling in the FinOps space, where organizations, including large enterprises, are opting to develop their own solutions.
The DIY Shift and Its Advantages
Traditionally, companies invested in off-the-shelf Cloud Cost Management & Optimization (CCMO) tools, lured by the promise of hundreds of engineers maintaining the software and the potential for significant cost savings through better cloud infrastructure management. However, integrating these tools into complex organizations proved challenging, with culture transformation and team accountability playing a crucial role.
Trend
The 2023 trend, however, is marked by a shift towards leveraging existing tooling and combining native cloud management tools like AWS Cost Explorer and Microsoft Cost Management for Azure with custom-built capabilities. Organizations are embracing observability and monitoring solutions to drive insights into application costs, while fostering a culture of ownership and cost awareness within business units.
Why Choose DIY: Organizations are increasingly choosing the DIY route for several reasons
Reworking off-the-shelf tools is comparable to building DIY solutions, making the latter more appealing.
Reworking off-the-shelf FinOps tools can be time-consuming and require significant customization to align with an organization’s unique needs and workflows. In contrast, building DIY solutions allows for tailoring the tool precisely to the organization’s requirements, providing greater flexibility and cost-effectiveness in the long run. The appeal of the DIY approach lies in the ability to have full control over feature development.
The cost of traditional CCMO tooling, in combination with tons of customizations is often too high, making DIY a cost-effective alternative.
The cost of traditional CCMO FinOps tooling can be prohibitive, especially for organizations with large cloud infrastructures and extensive usage. As cloud usage grows, the expenses associated with licensing, maintenance, and support for these tools can escalate significantly.
As a general rule, organizations typically allocate an equivalent budget for customizations and integrations as they do for license fees. For organizations with a cloud spend of less than $10 million a year, the expenditure on support staff and engineering customizations often doubles the cost of their CCMO license fee.
The quality of the tooling provided by the public cloud providers has significantly improved, making them viable options for customized solutions.
The 2023 FinOps landscape is witnessing a surge in DIY solutions as organizations embrace existing tooling and build capabilities with for example PowerBI on top of it. This shift towards DIY empowers companies to achieve flexibility, and alignment with their unique needs and culture. By integrating native cloud management tools and fostering a culture of cost awareness, organizations are taking control of their cloud financial management in innovative and effective ways.
Need help – at TechNative we have supported many organizations with implementing customized FinOps solutions.
Reach out to my colleagues Sverre or Rense. At TechNative we have a FinOps practice with consultants that have been in your shoes. All seasoned professionals who have dedicated their careers to driving cost efficiencies and optimizations for complex platforms. They are eager to guide you on the path to creating your DIY FinOps tooling and are always ready to lend a helping hand when needed.