FinOps Center and the 2024 FinOps Framework
We've been building FinOps Center for 2 years based on what our team saw as challenges for customers.
Reviewing their framework now, we provide perspective on how we think about the categories and what we've implemented in FinOps Center (FoC) from the Point of View of the above Theme
Phases:
Inform | FoC provides awareness of AWS Spending to all constituents in context to their financial scope. |
Optimize | FoC provides Recommendations from AWS Cost Optimization Hub to all constituents to show where opportunities are for them to push for implementation. |
Operate | FoC is purpose built with the processes to efficiently operate customers' AWS Spending. Operationalizing processes are very hard which is why we're thoughtful in the screen designs and process of FoC. |
Maturity:
Crawl | |
Walk | |
Run | FoC was built to move AWS Customers significantly forward in maturity. Within a week, customers will have all their main AWS FinOps processes implemented and team onboarded. |
Principles:
Teams need to collaborate | FoC Roles, Hierarchy, and Processes are rooted in “All of Organization” Collaboration |
Decisions are driven by business value of cloud | Migration and Specialized Workload (e.g. AI) business cases often leverage programs like MAP from AWS. FoC provides management services for AWS Programs and will release support as new Programs are introduced or as changes to existing programs are made. |
Everybody takes Ownership for their cloud usage | FoC design is to push usage management to the product owners and the organizational members between them and centralized cloud leadership. |
FinOps data should be accessible and timely | FoC data is available to all users that are onboarded with the latest AWS Spending data and users. |
A centralized team drives FinOps | Management of FoC is by a centralized team monitoring the processes of the broader team. |
Take advantage of the variable cost model of the cloud | FoC spend cards that drive in cycle approvals provide spend governance/control for variable spending. |
Personas:
Engineering | FoC works to remove tasks from Engineering that relate to help with Financial concerns. |
Leadership | FoC hierarchy is aligned to the financial scope of different users with the rollups in spending. |
FinOps Practitioner | FoC Practitioners are aligned to our CCoE roles that have key activities around allocation and management of spend approvals. |
Procurement | FoC Vendor Management Role allows members to set price books, special contracts, and review the overall spending. |
Finance | FoC delivers the approved spend data via Files that they need to integrate spending to Core Financial and FP&A applications. |
Product | FoC distributes responsibility to Product Organization to manage their spending. In addition to Product Owners, their management “Portfolio Owners” approve their spending, estimates, and budgets. |
Allied Personas:
ITAM | None at this Time |
ITFM | FoC integrated trusted/approved data back to core financial applications. |
Security | FoC is a private-cloud solution running inside a customer's Cloud-Estate. |
Sustainability | H2 2024 |
ITSM | FoC will integrate into ITSM solutions during engineering processes like Account Venting. |
Domains and Capabilities:
Understanding Cloud Usage & Costs
Data Ingestion | FoC is an integration platform. We ingest data from Core Financial System and AWS CUR that we process for files delivery back to Core Financial and FP&A. |
Allocation | FoC enables Allocation of AWS Accounts to be done along with the Account Vendor Process by Financial Budget. Further Allocation can be done at Workload. |
Reporting & Analytics | FoC embeds Amazon QuickSight and CUDOS Framework to support any Reporting requirements. Soon Amazon Q will provide additional capabilities. |
Anomaly Management | Amazon QuickSight provides Anomaly Detection. |
Quantify Business Value:
Planning & Estimating | Product Owners create Estimates for their Workloads that feed into their Budget Schedule. Budgets are then approved by the Portfolio Owners. |
Forecasting | Product Owners schedule their monthly spending according to the organization's guidance on spending run-rates and bill expectations. |
Budgeting | Product Owners set their Budget with Rollup based on users Financial Scope. |
Benchmarking | Estimates are held to be used to rationalize Benchmark spending. |
Unit Economics | Approved spending is produced in Files for Unit Economic analysis in FP&A solutions. |
Architecting for Cloud | While FoC does not monitor Cloud Native opportunities like Workloads, it is a Cloud Native Services Solution that is installed inside a customer's AWS Cloud Estate. |
Workload Optimization | FoC integrates Recommendations from Cloud Optimization Hub. |
Licensing & SaaS | N/A |
Rate Optimization | N/A |
Cloud Sustainability | Will provide visibility in future releases. |
FinOps Practices Operations | FoC is essentially a FinOps Practice CCoE. |
FinOps Education & Enablement | FoC looks to normalize a lot of the hard things in Cloud usage. |
Cloud Policy & Governance | FoC provides the core process for Cloud Financial Policies & Governance. |
Invoicing and Chargebacks | FoC produces files for Invoices and chargebacks to be integrated back to Core Financial Systems. |
FinOps Assessment | FoC tracks Estimates and AWS Programs that drive migration and usage decisions. |
Onboarding Workloads | FoC integrates to the Account Vendor Process and enables Product Owners to define their Workloads. |
FinOps Tools & Services | FoC natively integrates with AWS Cloud Optimization Hub, but may be migrated or operated with other 3rd Party Cost Optimization Solutions. |
Intersection Disciplines | FoC will include additional services that homogenize different terminology that is used across organizations to FoC and AWS context. |