Key Takeaways from FinOpsX 2024: Elevating Financial Operations with Tangent

Attending FinOpsX 2024, organized by The FinOps Foundation, in San Diego was an enlightening experience, offering numerous valuable insights into the evolving landscape of Financial Operations (FinOps). Here are the key takeaways from the conference, along with additional insights to enhance our understanding and implementation of FinOps at Tangent Works.

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Understanding FinOps: A critical Business Function

FinOps is no longer just a niche concern but a critical business function. It integrates financial accountability into the cloud operating model, ensuring organizations can manage, forecast, and optimize their cloud spending effectively. The consensus at FinOpsX was clear: embracing FinOps is essential for any organization leveraging cloud services to achieve cost efficiency and operational excellence.

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The Pillars of FinOps: Inform, Optimize, and Operate

FinOps can be distilled into three main pillars:

• Inform: Providing transparency into cloud costs and usage is the foundation. Effective FinOps practices rely on accurate and timely data to inform stakeholders about spending.
• Optimize: Continuous optimization of cloud resources is crucial. This involves identifying and eliminating waste, leveraging reserved instances, and taking advantage of spot instances.
• Operate: Establishing processes and governance to manage cloud spending is essential. This includes regular reviews, budget enforcement, and automated policies.

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FinOpsX highlighted the importance of collaboration between finance, engineering, and business teams. Silos must be broken down to foster a culture of shared responsibility for cloud costs. By working together, these teams can ensure that financial decisions are aligned with technical and business goals.

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The Next Hurdles: Forecasting and Anomaly Detection

A primary challenge identified for FinOps practitioners is improving forecasting and anomaly detection. With the increasing complexity of cloud environments, accurate cost predictions and timely anomaly detection are crucial. Tangent Works addresses this with Tangent, which utilizes InstantML to generate real-time predictive models. Tangent dynamically adapts to data changes, providing precise forecasts without extensive model management​.

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Tangent enables companies to swiftly create predictive models, allowing them to respond effectively to market changes and make strategic, data-driven decisions. This technology is vital for enhancing prediction accuracy and rapidly detecting anomalies, thereby improving the efficiency and reliability of FinOps practices​.

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Substantial Growth in FinOps Practices

FinOps practices are expanding rapidly across various industries. The increasing complexity of cloud environments and the need for cost optimization drive this growth. Organizations are investing more in FinOps tools and training, recognizing the critical role of financial management in cloud operations.

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Industry Insight: The momentum behind FinOps is not just a trend but a necessity as cloud costs continue to rise. According to FinOps Foundation’s surveys, 73% of organizations have seen their cloud spend increase year-over-year, making the need for robust FinOps practices more critical than ever.

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Conclusion

By embracing the pillars of inform, optimize, and operate, and fostering collaboration between finance, engineering, and business teams, significant cost savings and operational efficiency are achieved. Tangent enhances FinOps by providing accurate forecasting and anomaly detection, which is crucial for managing the complexity of cloud environments. As cloud costs rise, adopting robust FinOps practices is essential for maintaining financial health and agility.

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