Getting to know how to ensure GCP based FinOps are practiced.

FinOps is an extremely useful framework which is more of a cultural shift that has brought finance, technology and business together.

Not only it drives effective cost management but also brings financial accountability for better business acceleration. 

Google Cloud Platform is a well-known platform that is designed over Google Cloud Architecture Framework.

It has all the strategies to help consider cost estimates, statistics, and decisions and FinOps makes sure you get the maximum out of all the money you spend on Google Cloud.

Google Cloud has produced a new whitepaper on FinOps to address FinOps specifically on Google Cloud.  

FinOps practices help align teams under a single aim – maximizing cloud investment.

Google Cloud FinOps Whitepaper 

For those that have not read this excellent whitepaper, the link is here.

Here are the Top Ten things you need to know about Google Cloud FinOps and how they are effective for businesses using GCP.

FinOps brings new processes into scene

Like DevOps, FinOps is quite similar in concept. The whole point is to make teams work in a streamlined manner.

FinOps helps to disparate functions together and brings out the best value for each process.

In order to effectively manage cloud costs and estimations, FinOps adoption is a good sign on Google Cloud. It outlines a wide range of new processes. 

FinOps also highlights the expenditure and spending that are out of the ordinary

FinOps helps align Teams under one aim

With FinOps, you can get maximum benefits of cloud.

This not only requires a change in mindset but also a good behavior of financial management is needed. The flexibility of cloud is another benefit.

Since it arises different motivations within teams, FinOps becomes a deciding factor which aligns the Teams under one common objective.

The finance team and technology team both can be on the same page and under same objectives.

Is the FinOps Certified Practitioner (FOCP) worth it?

The FinOps Central Team

The FinOps central team is expected to Demonstrate the core Google Cloud Platform knowledge to interact with engineers.

This way, it is easier to identify cloud costs, wastages and be in a position to discuss cost optimization activities. 

The Team members must demonstrate their financial knowledge and interact with business teams to discuss better forecasting and spending

FinOps makes you get most of GCP

Most companies are born in the cloud, whereas other companies make the shift to the cloud. Whatever stage the organization is in, FinOps makes them make the best use of GCP.

All the operational level details like security assessment or identify and access management configurations and other foundational activities can go side by side FinOps. 

The initial stage is to implement FinOps, start small and continuously improve.

Google’s FinOps framework has provided all the key dimensions

FinOps combines all the key dimensions for People, Processes and Technology.

People consists of FinOps Central Team and all the stakeholders related to cross-functional domains.

All the FinOps cultural principles are also encompassed within the GCP framework.

Processes are based on Google FinOps “Epics” which are the most important activities while implementing services on Google Cloud Platform.

It is mostly related to individual workload or workload of entire cloud estate.

Lastly, Technology aspect compliments the Epics where Google Cloud Platform tooling is there to leverage Epics.

While using Google Cloud Platform, it is to make sure that cloud has a variable nature in itself. FinOps becomes successful when everyone in the organization adapts to the variable nature of cloud.

Cloud costs are changing in nature due to the pay as you go model. 

Thus, new risks emerge while the apps become robust due to the backend infrastructure.

For example, bandwidth utilizations may vary based on a project requirement for which the finance team would have to learn to more about the application patterns to understand fluctuations in costs.

FinOps helps in streamlining business decisions

While financial decision is made in the right direction of business value perspective, then is FinOps at its best in the organization.

While the finance team is budgeting or taking financial decision based on cloud, it is tempting to make cost benefit decisions.

However, every cut down costs is not a saving at all times.

For example, if an app requires one extra feature of Google Cloud Platform just to stay stable and keep the robustness intact, even if the feature costs extra, the deal is not bad.

A flickering app or an app with bad user experience is costlier to the organization than an over budget cloud features

What is Cloud FinOps really all about?

FinOps enables financial accountability

With FinOps in place, Cloud financial stability is achieved. This is when all the teams involved are accountable for their cloud spending and take full responsibility of it.

Each employee having access to cloud resources have an impact on cloud spending. 

FinOps Central Team has to make employees learn that cloud costs are not someone else’s responsibly. It is every one’s responsibility.

Thus, to keep cloud costs intact, employees must learn to own their cloud costs.

With FinOps, Mistakes are turned into opportunities

Technological space has now normalized failure. It is considered ad the first step to success in literal terms.

Much like the DevOps cultural slogan “Make it safe to fail first”, FinOps has also encourages this culture.

Mistakes are considered as blamelessness opportunities. Finger pointing and shaming is also discouraged with FinOps in GCP.

Rather, the causes of mistakes are figured out and they are avoided in future. However, employees are still accountable for their cloud spending and money related decisions

FinOps supports agility

FinOps encourages agile approach towards things. For example: Agile processes for budgeting are put in place with planning within IT.

This also means promoting IT iterative budget allocation and IT forecasting. 

It improves available information that we have at any point of time.

It also defines rakes for automating FinOps processes and improvement is achieved at every step.

Final thoughts…

FinOps helps automate cost management and figure out wastages effectively.

With Cloud FinOps, cost allocation is done in an agile focused method.

When considering your next steps toward FinOps, it’s important to remember
that an iterative process is needed. No organization can go from zero to fully
realized FinOps in a short period of time.

Google Cloud FinOps Whitepaper

In GCP, various policies and cost related strategies are streamlined with FinOps. 

FinOps helps streamline decisions around new spending challenges and understand the trends. 

Lastly, it also makes employees understand ownership of their cloud spending and helps to minimize cloud spend.

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