It’s the season of spooks, and here at Tangoe we love celebrating Halloween. But you know what scares me more than zombies, devils, and chupacabras? When CIOs, CTOs, and CFOs tell me they’re taking a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to the FinOps framework using their own tools and teams to implement a cloud expense management strategy.
Here are data-backed reasons why FinOps + DIY can stir The Hellraiser.
Forrester “Vehemently Dissuades” DIY for Cloud Expense Management
Like every good horror story goes, there’s always that one curious character that summons evil, not realizing the power of what lurks beneath. But if you listen to the good witch, you’ll know better than to open pandoras box.
Industry analysts are warning business leaders of unleashing powers that can terrorize a company’s ability to effectively manage their technology costs. Take for example this bad omen from Forrester: “At Forrester, we vehemently dissuade FinOps teams from taking a DIY route because of the level of complexity and the number of person-hours required to maintain it.”
The first monster, “level of complexity,” refers to the tooling strategy and the challenges of building a technology platform capable of reeling in cloud costs. Establishing a vastly integrated, AI-powered platform in-house can be problematic and time consuming – akin to a Halloween nightmare. Forrester estimates that an in-house approach is only for those capable of investing $1M+ in a technology platform to enable cloud financial management.
That’s because AI and vast integration are the best ways to enable cloud observability.
Cloud observability, also called cloud visibility, is the capability to monitor and measure the current state of cloud software and infrastructure, tracing service usage data, configuration data, and cost metrics to continually optimize cloud service utilization and any associated expenses. A FinOps tool must be able to see across multiple cloud service providers and use AI to analyze mountains of data on the daily. Likewise, a FinOps tool must be directly integrated with hundreds of cloud software applications and multiple sources of user data to see and track the “evils of Shadow IT” and SaaS-based security vulnerabilities.” Learn how a fully integrated FinOps solution works and how it enables deep cloud observability.
The second monster, “number of human-hours required to maintain it,” refers to the fact that FinOps is an ongoing practice, and its tools need to be managed and maintained too. Analysts warn that FinOps programs typically start with three full-time employees and without the proper technology maintenance can run the risk of injecting technical debt into an organization. Plus, without ongoing FinOps innovation, an organization can quickly outgrow their homegrown solution.
“AI is very powerful, but it doesn’t mean business leaders can plug in a tool and achieve all that FinOps promises,” explained Chris Ortbals, Chief Product Officer at Tangoe. “The human touch of an expert is still necessary in training AI algorithms to support an ongoing FinOps practice. AI engines must keep track of a growing list of providers, price changes, and new discounts available. You have to consider how your FinOps platform will be supported and who will do the AI upkeep.”
This contextualizes why an outside partner can tame the beast of the FinOps workload. The right tool backed by the right level of human support can mean less work and faster success.
Better yet, it can also mean bigger payouts.
New Research: A FinOps Service Can Double Your Cloud Cost Savings
According to a new study of 200 FinOps programs, those who turn to a third-party for AI-driven software and services cut their costs twice as much as those with in-house solutions. Meanwhile, DIY approaches to FinOps that don’t use AI save less than 10%.
Marginal returns make for FinOps horror stories.
The study found those managing FinOps internally are more likely to report challenges with manual work and find it harder to control cost overruns when compared to FinOps managed services. Don’t miss this graphical summary of the FinOps research on how to succeed in reducing cloud costs.
Tangoe’s Specialty: Executing FinOps with Certainty
These FinOps nightmares are the real ghosts and goblins of the season. When you’re ready to activate your FinOps strategy avoiding the frights, panics, and sheer terrors of these FinOps failures, talk to Tangoe. Here’s a look at some of the business benefits and client results achieved using the Tangoe One Cloud expense management platform.
- One research firm controlled multi-cloud IaaS costs in 30 days, producing financial reports in 5 minutes instead of 5 days with their previous manual methods.
- A major manufacturer saved $250,000 annually after identifying and implementing the right commitment-based discounts to their IaaS services.
Contact us today for a FinOps solution demonstration and ask about our proof of concept.