Benjamin van der Maas discusses how his team is using AI to scale their FinOps efforts. Topics covered include the necessary groundwork for effective AI implementation, the importance of domain expertise, and how AI can streamline reporting and analysis. The conversation also touches on AI's role in sustainability and the potential challenges of relying on large language models (LLMs). 

• Automating Anomaly Investigation with AI - YouTube
• FinOps Certified: FinOps for AI
• Benjamin van der Maas | LinkedIn

Brad Payne, who leads the FinOps team at PointClickCare, shares how his team tackled cloud cost challenges not by jumping straight into optimization — but by focusing first on allocation and unit economics. That shift helped them uncover how cloud costs connected to specific products, customers, and revenue — sparking deeper collaboration with finance, pricing and packaging, and product teams. This resulted in FinOps moving beyond infrastructure to influence real business decisions.

• FinOps Certified: FinOps for AI
• Brad Payne | LinkedIn

Kim Wier & Ron Tatro return to share how their FinOps products have evolved over the last 3 years at Target. They share success and challenges they have had with forecasting both public and private clouds, the impact the introduction of AI has had, and how they provide cost, stability and tech debt information to over 5,000 developers. And they make it all sound approachable!

• FinOps as a Product - Kim Wier & Ron Tatro - YouTube
• Ron Tatro | LinkedIn
• Kim Wier | LinkedIn

Larry Advey discusses the significance of standardizing FinOps nomenclature through the FOCUS (FinOps Cost and Usage Specification) project to streamline communication across multi-provider environments. Larry shares his insights on the impact of FOCUS in reducing confusion among stakeholders by creating a unified language for billing data. The episode also highlights Larry’s experiences from recent FinOps events, upcoming plans for FinOpsX, and the importance of engaging with the community for continuous improvement.

00:00 Welcome to FinOpsPod

01:25 January Recap and FinOpsX Planning

06:28 Focus Project and Stakeholder Management

09:36 The Role of a Focus Maintainer

16:23 The Vision for Focus

20:11 Exploring FOCUS Nomenclature

21:09 Utilizing the FOCUS Sandbox

21:32 Diving into Use Cases

22:49 Navigating the Focus Website

29:12 Engaging with the FinOps Community

34:24 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

• FinOps X 2025 - The Home of FinOps
• FOCUS Sandbox
• FOCUS™ - FinOps Open Cost & Usage Specification
• Larry Advey | LinkedIn

In this episode, hosts, Joe & Stacy, with special guest Sam Benson, highlight significant events like the successful FinOps X and FinOps X Europe conferences, community growth, and the evolution of FinOps practices. The episode wraps up with reflections on the past year's achievements and aspirations for 2025, encouraging practitioners to stay engaged and keep learning.

00:00 Welcome to FinOpsPod!

00:28 Meet the Hosts and Special Guest

01:11 Year-End Reflections

02:45 Sam's Role and Contributions

05:49 Community Events and Highlights

08:44 FinOps X and Memorable Moments

10:18 The 'No Runners' Theme

11:56 Adapting and Evolving in FinOps

14:08 Is Rob a Master Gardener?

15:58 Highlights from FinOpsX Europe

18:05 FinOps Scopes and Expanding Roles

20:05 Focus and Community Engagement

22:47 Emerging Topics and AI

25:38 Looking Forward to 2025

30:49 Closing Remarks and Holiday Wishes

• FinOps X 2025 - The Home of FinOps
• The Scope of FinOps Extends Beyond Public Cloud

James Barney discusses the complexities and nuances of applying FinOps principles to AI usage in the cloud, explores various models of AI consumption, such as SaaS and self-hosted solutions, and delves into the challenges of accurately tracking and managing AI costs. Insights are shared from James Barney's recently contributed paper on AI cost management, emphasizing the importance of understanding AI's impact on cloud expenditures and business value. The conversation also touches on the necessity of open dialogue within organizations and the potential for AI to enhance non-customer-facing processes. Practical advice is given on how to approach AI cost management conversations and the value of learning by doing.

Note - views expressed by James are his alone and not those of his employer.

03:59 Understanding AI Cost Structures

05:38 FinOps Strategies for AI Workloads

12:10 Balancing Innovation and Cost Control

18:08 Tracking and Reporting AI Costs

19:34 Understanding AI Workloads

21:39 Guardrails for AI Usage

22:45 The Role of Context in AI

25:16 Politeness in AI Interactions

28:03 Exploring AI Tokens

31:35 Challenges in AI Cost Management

35:41 Community Involvement in AI

• James Barney | LinkedIn
• Cost Estimation of AI Workloads
• How to Forecast AI Services Costs in Cloud
• How to Build a Generative AI Cost and Usage Tracker

Anderson Oliveira shares his experience of losing his job as a FinOps Manager, how he stayed positive, and took his time to find his next opportunity. Lessons in this episode on community engagement and keeping the FinOps Principles in the forefront.

• FinOps Jobs - All the cloud financial management jobs in one place
• Anderson Oliveira | LinkedIn
• FinOps X Europe - Barcelona, Nov 11-14

TJ & Brent Eubanks join Rob Martin to discuss their experience and lessons learned with how to use Key Performance Indicators. While KPIs are good for a moment in time, they learned the importance of making sure to measure progress - or momentum - towards organization success.

• Brent Eubanks ☁️ | LinkedIn
• Anthony "TJ" Johnson | LinkedIn
• FinOps KPIs

If you aren't interested in feeling FinOps Community love, then this isn't the episode for you. Recorded at the end of Day 2, Stacy Joe and audience members go over their impressions from the conference. Highlights include discussion of the USS Midway party and keynotes, a wedding proposal, community appreciation, and a secret about Joe's career background that prepared him for FinOps.

• FinOps X Europe - Barcelona, Nov 11-14
• FinOps X ‘24 Day 2 KEYNOTE: American Express, FinOps Releases by Google Cloud, Microsoft, and AWS

Catch the vibes of FinOps X! Joe & Stacy review the experiences from Day 1 of the conference. Voices include: Tim O'Brien, Rob Martin, John from a Small Consultancy, Dann Berg, Karin Milkins, Anjali Oleksy and many more from the FinOps community!

• FinOps X 2024

Tammy Burnitt shares her experience in establishing a FinOps practice in a large global enterprise. Tips on spreading the message on FinOps and gaining collaborators, not competitors.

• Tammy Burnitt FOCP | LinkedIn
• FinOps X 2024

John Grubb shares how he is building his own open source FinOps stack. A great listen for anyone who has ever wondered how to even approach building their own tool.

Adrian Tatsch, most recently from McKesson, shares lessons from her career journey on the business side, and how they benefited her when she discovered FinOps. This is a must listen for anyone navigating a their career.

• Adrian Tatsch | LinkedIn
• FinOps X - June 27-30, 2023 San Diego, California

Joe and Stacy review the stats on FinOpsPod in 2023 and Ambassadors share about their year and what their plans are for 2024. Happy New Year!

• FinOps X 2024
• FinOps Certification and Training

Sarah Kula & Svetlana Pogrebny, from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, share their story about a tagging strategy that didn't work and how they went about fixing it. Plus, Stacy Case shares information about the new Certified FinOps Engineer course.

• FinOps Certification and Training
• Svetlana Pogrebny, CPA, CGA | LinkedIn
• Sarah Kula | LinkedIn

Joe asks attendees at the DC Roadshow "What FinOps thing have you learned this year?" You're never too experienced to learn something new, or learn something over again.

• FinOps X 2024
• Upcoming FinOps Roadshows

Learn more and join the FinOps Foundation at www.FinOps.org.

Jason Fuller, Head of Cloud at HERE Technologies, talks with Mike Fuller, CTO of the FinOps Foundation and looks back at lessons learned from doing FinOps since long before it was called FinOps.

• Jason Fuller | LinkedIn

Learn more and join the FinOps Foundation at www.FinOps.org.

Matt Randle & Lori Doon discuss how to drive collaboration between IT and Finance in a way that doesn't just improve FinOps capabilities, but also in a way that helps speed up and add value to the business.

• FinOps Persona Courses
• Lori Doon | LinkedIn
• Matthew Randle | LinkedIn

Victoria Levy from Alteryx and Keith Knowles from Envisor join the podcast to talk about Sprint 2 of the Managing Anomalies working group. Sprint 1 defined a process for approaching cloud spend anomalies and can be viewed here: https://www.finops.org/wg/managing-cloud-cost-anomalies/

• Keith Knowles | LinkedIn
• Victoria Levy | LinkedIn
• FinOps Working Groups
• Managing Cloud Cost Anomalies

Stacy & Joe process the experience of FinOps X 2023 and how amazing the FinOps community is. They review memorable moments, important announcments like the .5 Release of FOCUS, new FinOps Foundation Technical Advisory Council members and where FinOps X will be hosted in 2024. Then X attendees share their experiences of attending the conference. It's all about the community!

• FinOps Open Cost & Usage Specification (FOCUS)
• Shawn Rogan | LinkedIn
• Omkar Gokhale | LinkedIn
• Rachel Palmarozzi | LinkedIn
• Andrew Qu | LinkedIn
• Vik Saluja | LinkedIn
• Yuji Kazama | LinkedIn
• Joey Freeland | LinkedIn
• Theo Anidu | LinkedIn
• Simar (Simarpreet) Arora ☁️ | LinkedIn
• Shannon Daubaras | LinkedIn
• Alee Whitman | LinkedIn

Stacy & Joe share a 'Know Before You Go' for FinOps X in this final session preview before the conference.

Then Anastasija Jakovleva shares a preview of what to expect from her breakout session "Inspiring 140 Years Old Company to Implement FinOps", a talk on how to get FinOps buy-in when Cloud isn't yet a major focus of the company.

Check out the other breakout sessions at X: https://x.finops.org/agenda/

• Anastasija Jakovleva | LinkedIn
• FinOps X - June 27-30, 2023 San Diego, California

Thiago Gil previews his session discussing the financial challenges and ethical implications inherent in ML Ops/AI.

Register for FinOps X now: x.finops.org

Check out the other breakout sessions at X: https://x.finops.org/agenda/

• Thiago Bittencourt Gil | LinkedIn
• FinOps X - June 27-30, 2023 San Diego, California

Kate Ferguson previews the knowledge and experience she will share during her session at FinOps X presentation.

Register for FinOps X now: x.finops.org

Check out the other breakout sessions at X: https://x.finops.org/agenda/

• Kate Ferguson | LinkedIn
• FinOps X - June 27-30, 2023 San Diego, California

Kim Wier and Ron Tatro from Target preview their FinOps X presentation.

Register for FinOps X now: x.finops.org

Check out the other breakout sessions at X: https://x.finops.org/agenda/

• Ron Tatro | LinkedIn
• Kim Wier | LinkedIn
• FinOps X 2023: FinOps as a Product - Kim Wier & Ron Tat...

Sherri was scheduled to record this episode about how to scale a FinOps practice when you are a team of 1, when news hit and a wrench was thrown in the plan. Sherri still shares her wisdom on the topic, but also addresses when unexpected change happens that cause you to change your plans.

• Sherri (Baldwin) Wooldridge | LinkedIn

Amy Ashby, FinOps Lead at Under Armor, previews her FinOps X presentation.

Register for FinOps X now: x.finops.org

Check out the other breakout sessions at X: https://x.finops.org/agenda/

• FinOps X - June 27-30, 2023 San Diego, California
• Amy Ashby | LinkedIn

J.R. Storment & Mike Fuller, authors of Cloud FinOps - Collaborative, Real-Time Cloud Value Decision Making, visit to discuss what updates were included in the expansive Second Edition.

• Cloud FinOps: Collaborative, Real-Time Cloud Value Decision Making
• Mike Fuller | LinkedIn
• J.R. Storment | LinkedIn
• FinOps X - June 27-30, 2023 San Diego, California

Keith Austin from AIA, the first FinOps Foundation Enterprise Member in Asia, shares their story about their drive to be leaders in their region and their adoption of FinOps. Topics covered include training and development, challenges and success in FinOps adoption and collaborating with departments they had normally not interacted with.

• Upcoming FinOps Events
• Keith Austin | LinkedIn
• AIA Grants First Awards Under Its University Scholarships Programme | AIA

Part 1 of the conversation between the FinOps Foundation's Rob Martin and FinOps Pro and Ambassador, Ermanno Attardo. Topics covered include things to consider when choosing a FinOps tool, how to form FinOps teams and the best ways to build Trust.

• FinOps Certification and Training
• Ermanno Attardo | LinkedIn
• FinOps X - June 27-30, 2023 San Diego, California

In a special episode - Joe & Stacy discuss traditional and nontraditional paths to a FinOps career and how to identify good candidates for a FinOps team.

Share this quick episode with someone looking to get into FinOps or someone you think SHOULD get into FinOps!

• FinOps Jobs - All the cloud financial management jobs in one place

Lindbergh Matillano, Director of the Cost Optimization team at Avalara, shares his experience and perspective towards FinOps and FinOps governance. How he leverages his heritage and his background in finance. Lindbergh also shares how to approach automating cloud governance.

• Lindbergh Matillano | LinkedIn

Ashley Hromatko joins Stacy and Joe as they review some of their favorite FinOps moments of 2022. Plus - insights into what sort of content we are looking for at FinOps X 2023!

Thank YOU (yes - you the person reading this right now) for helping make this community great and for making it a special year. Happy New Year!

• State of FinOps 2023 Survey
• Call for Proposals FInOps X 2023
• FinOps X - June 27-30, 2023 San Diego, California

Zach Stitham, VP - Cloud Business Management Office at Fidelity, talks with Ashley Hromatko on FinOps KPIs. How do you chose them? How do you mature them? How do you drive the right behaviors and culture by leveraging them? Stay on target for your goals by listening to this episode!

• FinOps X '22 Breakout: Fidelity's FinOps KPI Journey - Zachary Stitham & Noel Crowley (Fidelity) - YouTube
• Zachary Stitham | LinkedIn

Rightsizing an under-utilized resource is an easy way to save on cloud costs, right? Or is it? In a conversation taken from the FinOps Foundation Slack channels, Jérémy Nancel & John Renne debate the pros and cons of reducing cloud spend by rightsizing resources vs incurring tech debt via code drift.

• Jérémy NANCEL | LinkedIn
• John Renne | LinkedIn
• Join the FinOps Foundation Community Today

We all make mistakes. Some mistakes are just more expensive than others. In this episode, listen and learn from the experiences of others in the FinOps community who bravely share their experiences with runaway bills, outages and disaster recover tests gone wrong.

• Join the FinOps Foundation Community Today
• Courtney Bormann | LinkedIn
• Eric Mulartrick, MBA | LinkedIn
• Michael Barba | LinkedIn
• Erik Norman | LinkedIn

Alison McIntyre, Cloud FinOps Lead at Lloyds Banking Group, discusses what it feels like to start the FinOps Certified Professional course, cloud native application migrations and the impact of risk and regulations. There is a moment for everyone in this episode!

• FinOps Certified Professional Course Information
• Alison McIntyre | LinkedIn

Tony Johnson, fresh from presenting on Unit Economics at FinOps X, talks with Joe about how to start and mature using unit economics to manage your cloud environment.

• August FinOps Summit - Unit Economics Working Group Update
• Introduction to Cloud Unit Economics
• Anthony "TJ" Johnson | LinkedIn

Joe visits with some of his old friends and colleagues, Ursula LaVeck and Julia Harvey, to learn how they continued maturing their operations after implementing FinOps at their organizations.

• Julia Harvey | LinkedIn
• Ursula LaVeck, MBA | LinkedIn
• Join the FinOps Foundation Community Today
• FinOps Foundation - YouTube

The first annual FinOps X conference was held in Austin, TX in June. Joe & Stacy wrap it up and talk about the Ballroom B Wolfpack and the rest of our amazing community that showed up and embraced being together at the first FinOps conference. Includes interviews with Eli Mansoor, Dieter Matzion, Aaron Edell, Mike Eisenstien, Alee Whitman, Dann Berg, Michelle Dupuis and many more!

• Mastering AWS Cost Optimization: Real-world technical and operational cost-saving best practices
• FinOps Foundation - FinOps X recordings

FinOpsPod checks their voicemail and receives a question on Cloud Sustainability from Prabha Palanivelu. Mark Butcher swoops in and provides a quick answer and pitches you to join the FinOps Foundation Sustainability Working Group. To join the working group, join the Foundation to get Slack access and join the channel #wg-finops-for-sustainability.

• Prabhagaran Palanivelu | LinkedIn
• Leave FinOpsPod a voicemail
• Mark Butcher | LinkedIn

The Finance episode! Pedro Veloso, International Man of FinOps, has performed FinOps-style roles in Brazil and Germany. Joe & Pedro discuss finance diving into the world of cloud, some of the misconceptions, the challenges and the problems that need to be worked on in order to provide data for real-time decision making.

Also, special-guest appearance by Finn the Dog.

• Pedro Matos Veloso | LinkedIn
• Spotify Scaling Agile Model - PM Today

It's the episode about tags, labels, account structures - how you attribute your cloud usage and spend to information that is important to you! Learn how to start, evolve and mature your attribution strategy with insights from Jason Rhoades, Development Manager at Intuit.

• Jason Rhoades | LinkedIn
• Cost Allocation (Metadata & Hierarchy)

Learn more and join the FinOps Foundation at www.FinOps.org.

The FinOps career path continues to evolve. Hear the perspectives of three practitioners, Vijay Karthavya Kudithipudi, Kate Ferguson and Hector J. Meneses Jr., who have recently started their FinOps career journeys. What is similar to your path? What is different?

Register for FinOpsX: X.FinOps.Org

• Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome
• Hector J. Meneses Jr. | LinkedIn
• Kate Ferguson | LinkedIn
• Vijaya Karthavya Kudithipudi, PMP® | LinkedIn
• FinOps March 2022 Summit - More State of FinOps Data - YouTube
• FinOps X | Linux Foundation Events - Registration and information for FinOps X

Learn more and join the FinOps Foundation at www.FinOps.org.

Kim Wier, Director of Efficiency Engineering at Target, joins the show and shares her career path, how she has built her team, leveraging Target's culture and commitment to learn. We also dive into the why and how Kim's team are building their own FinOps toolset. You do not want to miss this conversation!

Register for FinOpsX: X.FinOps.Org

• FinOps March 2022 Summit - More State of FinOps Data - YouTube
• Kim Wier | LinkedIn
• Target CIO Mike McNamara: Technology is too important to outsource | CIO

Learn more and join the FinOps Foundation at www.FinOps.org.

Join the FinOps Foundation staff on their trip to the United Kingdom! Listen to clips of the London Roadshow and experience connecting with FinOps peers with Noel Crowley. Then get an overview of the staff offsite in Edinburgh.

Register for FinOpsX: X.FinOps.Org

London Roadshow presenters:

Natalie Daley

Bhups Hirani

Sanjay Apte

Learn more and join the FinOps Foundation at www.FinOps.org.

Ben de Mora - The Chaos Is To Be Embraced

Ben de Mora may be the newest staff member at the FinOps Foundation, but he is absolutely not new to the Foundation at all. Ben has been a FinOps Instructor for years and he shares his experiences teaching the FinOps Certified Practitioner course. The conversation goes in a number of different directions - architecture, sustainability, estimated cloud costs and banjo. As Ben reminds us, the chaos is to be embraced.

Key Moments

06:52 - FinOps Certified Practitioner Course

11:08 - FinOps & Architecture

18:52 - Implications of preemptible compute and sustainability

24:57 - Cost estimates while launching infrastructure

• FinOps X, June 20-21, Austin, Texas
• FinOps NYC Meetup Jan 2022: Ali Khajeh-Hosseini, co-founder Infracost - YouTube
• FinOps Training & Certification
• Ben de Mora | LinkedIn
• New Shoes - Eric Bibb | Song Info | AllMusic - Song that Ben's father plays banjo on.

Be sure to follow FinOpsPod to catch the latest episodes.

Learn more about the FinOps Foundation at FinOps.org.

FinOps Pod launches for the first time with guest is Deana Solis, Sr. FinOps Engineer at Smarsh.

Deana has been an active practitioner member of the FinOps Foundation since early 2020 and has been an active contributor to working groups in the foundation.

During the interview, Deana goes over the importance of community, diversity and how to build trust when implementing a FinOps culture.

Key Moments:

[10:46] - Thinking about people when designing policies and process

[15:18] - Culture clashes between new and experienced workers when implementing change

[20:08] - Finance vs Engineering culture clashes

[23:06] - Diversity in styles of work

[32:11] - "Not Savings Plans for RDS"

Relevant Links

Deana Solis LinkedIn Profile

Noel Crowley LinkedIn Profile

Stacy Case LinkedIn Profile

Joe Daly LinkedIn Profile

FinOps Foundation Shared Costs Working Group - Guide to Spreading Out Shared Costs

Learn more and join the FinOps Foundation at www.FinOps.org.

Music by Skilsel from Pixabay