A decade ago, “cloud” was shorthand for infrastructure. Servers, storage, and networking were moving off-premises, and companies scrambled to understand new cost models. FinOps emerged as a discipline for governing those costs, helping clarify complexity, align investments with outcomes, and uncover new ways to save.
Fast forward to today, and “cloud” is no longer a single destination. It’s a continuum that spans infrastructure and software services that overlap and evolve together. Virtually every enterprise now operates in a multi-cloud or hybrid model, combining providers and consumption types into a single – yet still highly complex – environment.
From a cost perspective, that complexity will never let up. We’re only going to see more providers, more invoices, and more fragmentation, particularly driven by the surge of AI and machine learning (ML). It’s no longer about managing costs in a cloud but financially optimizing the entire cloud estate holistically.
The principles remain the same: visibility, accountability, and optimization. But now they must be applied across the full cloud spectrum, whether dollars are tied up in virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, or SaaS licenses. Earlier this year, the FinOps framework was also updated to explicitly address AI and ML services with the addition of scopes. You can even apply FinOps principles to other technology investments like mobility and fixed telecom, but that’s a conversation for another time.
If FinOps has moved beyond infrastructure, how does it apply across the full cloud continuum? Let’s look at what it means in each layer, and how it pays off.
FinOps for IaaS: New Demands & Higher Stakes
About 94% of enterprises overshoot their public cloud budgets, overspending by an average of 43%. Elastic infrastructure is powerful, but it also makes waste almost inevitable. And with AI, costly GPU clusters, and fast-scaling Kubernetes environments in the mix, that elasticity has never been more expensive.
As corporate budgets soar, AI will arguably have the greatest impact on FinOps practitioners in the coming year. The FinOps Foundation’s State of FinOps 2025 report shows that AI spending is now managed by 63% of IT and finance teams – a leap from 31% in 2024.
The fundamentals of FinOps remain the same, but the stakes have been raised.
- Visibility: Break down GPU spend by provider, project, and cost center; spot usage spikes before costs spiral.
- Accountability: Distinguish GPU and container costs from standard cloud spend so teams understand when – and just as importantly, why – they’re paying for premium resources.
- Optimization: Continuously right-size GPU capacity, detect idle or oversized resources, and translate usage into immediate cost-saving actions.
Did you know? A recent study found that a major source of cloud overspend comes from lack of data protection. Many companies mistakenly assume their cloud provider delivers comprehensive security. This signals a key difference between a DIY FinOps practice and a FinOps-certified platform. The latter enables holistic cloud financial oversight with built-in protections that reduce the chance of data breaches, unauthorized access, and compliance penalties.
FinOps for SaaS: The Fastest-growing Priority
Organizations use only about half of the SaaS licenses they purchase, and 30-40% of IT expenses are consumed by shadow IT. With SaaS making up more than 40% of enterprise budgets, stronger financial governance is critical. It’s encouraging to see that SaaS has become the top focus area for extending FinOps beyond infrastructure. According to the FinOps Foundation’s latest report, 65% of teams are already managing SaaS spend or planning to in the year ahead.
Here’s how FinOps translates to SaaS.
- See what you’ve got. Shine a light on all your SaaS apps in use (including the ones you don’t know about), to build a complete and accurate inventory of tools, licenses, and costs.
- Check who’s using it. Get a clear view of license activity: who’s logging in, how often, and whether the tool is delivering value.
- Assign ownership. Put costs back in the right hands. Marketing should own marketing apps. Sales should own the CRM. Make teams accountable for what they’re spending instead of everything being buried in one IT line item.
- Spot overlap. Identify when multiple apps are doing the same thing so you can consolidate and gain vendor leverage.
- Optimize and negotiate. With usage and ownership data in hand, you can start right-sizing licenses, cancel unused seats, and approach renewals with hard numbers to drive better deals.
- Keep it clean. Establish a framework for continuous monitoring and reporting so waste doesn’t creep back in; ensure SaaS spend stays tied to business value.
Tangoe makes these steps faster, smarter, and more scalable with AI, automation, and extensive integration. Our technology consulting and advisory services are the cherry on top, guiding contract negotiations, vendor consolidation, and renewal strategies to make sure savings stick. One customer, a leading manufacturer, saved $183,000 after Tangoe conducted a comprehensive audit of its Microsoft 365 estate and found dozens of duplicate apps.
FinOps for Private Cloud: The Overlooked Opportunity
While private cloud offers better financial visibility and predictability, costs still get buried. Up-front hardware purchases show up as CapEx, masking the true ongoing cost of operations. Shared services hide which departments are driving consumption. Legacy chargeback models spread costs with outdated formulas, creating confusion instead of accountability.
Extending FinOps to private cloud helps bring these costs into focus. It’s about treating on-prem resources with the same visibility, accountability, and optimization expected in the public cloud.
- Visibility: Surface the true cost of private cloud resources, including hardware, storage, and support contracts that often go overlooked.
- Accountability: Tie private cloud consumption back to the business units using it so shared services no longer feel like “free IT.”
- Optimization: Right-size workloads, retire or consolidate underutilized infrastructure, and align investments to the business outcomes they actually serve.
Tangoe is unique in that it provides a single, unified view across public, private, and hybrid environments. Deep integrations pull in financial and operational data from private cloud estates, normalize it alongside public cloud spend, and deliver actionable insights through intuitive dashboards and customizable reporting. At any point, you can tap into our consulting and advisory services for extra support (and savings).
Why Tangoe?
To understand how Tangoe supercharges FinOps, it’s important to understand how our solutions work together.
Tangoe One is our flagship Technology Expense Management (ITEM) platform. It’s a single pane of glass that unlocks visibility, accountability, and optimization across the entire IT estate – applying FinOps to mobility, telecom, and cloud.
Tangoe One Cloud is the cloud-specific solution within Tangoe One that’s FinOps-certified. This is where organizations get the tools for IaaS management, SaaS management, private and hybrid management, and even UCaaS management with the rigor of FinOps discipline.
Together, they go beyond what other solutions offer.
- FinOps across the board: Wherever you consume IT, we deliver FinOps: IaaS, SaaS, UCaaS, private cloud, mobility, and even fixed telecom.
- AI optimization: From right-sizing virtual machines to taming container sprawl and GPUs, Tangoe delivers the next generation of optimization where cloud spend is exploding.
- Deep cloud visibility: Tangoe delivers unmatched connectivity with pre-built integrations across all major IaaS providers, 300+ SaaS apps, shadow IT discovery, and deep user analytics for platforms like Microsoft 365 – providing the clearest view of your entire cloud estate.
- Advisory services: Our solutions are backed by a team of 60+ technology consultants, advisors, and negotiation artists who can help with everything from savings analyses and inventory audits to contract negotiations and staff augmentations – saving an average 30% on cloud costs.
Think Big Picture, Get Big Savings
Anywhere cloud costs can balloon, FinOps is relevant – and Tangoe One is built to deliver it. With proven capabilities, advanced optimization, and FinOps built into the roadmap across the board, you’ll have the strongest partner in FinOps and the best opportunity to maximize long-term savings.