In partnership with

🎅 CHRISTMAS FINOPS MENU:

• Even Netflix Struggles with Cloud Costs

• How Deezer Optimizes their Kubernetes Clusters

• Hackney Council Secures a Large Discount in AWS

• Mention of Honour: FinOps Events in Europe in 2025?

• Job Opportunity by Duckbill Group

• Professional Spotlight with the Fred FlintStone of FinOps

Collaborate with FinOps Weekly

Big Tech
How Netflix Handles Its Cloud Costs?

Netflix uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its cloud infrastructure. A lot of AWS. The company has a team that helps other Netflix teams understand their resource usage and costs. This team created two main tools:

1. Foundational Platform Data (FPD): A central place for all platform data

2. Cloud Efficiency Analytics (CEA): Uses FPD to show efficiency metrics

These tools help Netflix teams make smart decisions about using and paying for cloud resources. The team faces some challenges, especially in customizing data for different platforms, keeping data accurate and complete & tracking usage across custom-built solutions. In the future, they plan to cover more areas and use advanced methods to predict usage and find unusual costs.

Editorial View

Netflix is creating built-in solutions to control and understand their AWS costs. Even with a cloud-native long journey, companies are creating solutions to control their costs. We can see that FinOps has a long journey to become an easy process, and even large players are working/buying solutions for this matter.

Read the complete article

In partnership with FinOut
Are you tired of manually managing your tagging governance?

In this article, Asaf Liveanu, Finout's CPO and Co-Founder, shares his perspective on:

• Tagging Challenges: Enterprises struggle with fragmented practices, manual efforts, and scaling issues in dynamic, multi-cloud environments.

• Why It Matters: Proper tagging is key for cost tracking, optimization, and compliance, preventing inefficiencies and budget overruns.

• Scalable Solutions: Automated tools like Finout ensure real-time detection, policy enforcement, and comprehensive cloud cost visibility.

If tagging has been a pain point for your organization, this article is definitely worth your time.

Kubernetes Optimization
[CODE INSIDE] Optimize Kubernetes with custom metrics auto-scaling!

Using only CPU and memory to decide when to scale your Kubernetes cluster isn't always enough. This article by the Deezer team explains how to use custom metrics to make better scaling decisions using Prometheus & HPAs. The article walks through:

• Setting up Prometheus and Prometheus Adapter

• Configuring custom metrics

• Creating an HPA that uses a custom "event loop utilization" metric

This approach lets you scale based on metrics that really matter for your app's performance. The authors suggest using multiple replicas of the Prometheus Adapter in production to avoid a single point of failure. They also recommend monitoring the adapter itself. For even more advanced scaling, they mention KEDA (Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling) as an option to explore.

This method gives you more control over how your apps scale, helping them handle varying loads more efficiently.

Read the Complete Article

Public Sector
Hackney secures a 22% AWS cloud discount for growing usage

Hackney Council is deepening its relationship with Amazon Web Services to save money and secure better cloud services

The Council has a new deal with AWS. They agreed to increase usage by 8% yearly. In return, they get a 22% discount. The deal started in November 2024. It will last for three years. The contract is valued at £3 million.

The Council's usage has grown since 2020. A cyber attack pushed them to use more cloud. Cloud services proved secure during the attack. Cloud costs have increased since the attack. Costs went from just over £1 million to £2.85 million. Part of the increase includes data recovery costs. Due to this, Hackney is optimizing its cloud use. They're removing unused services. They aim to cut costs by paying for steps in advance.

Government discounts are helping public sector cloud buyers. The One Government Value Agreement with AWS saves money. Still, terms sometimes remain undisclosed. This strategic cloud deal shows Hackney's commitment to efficient spending and smarter tech use.

See the Complete Information here

👷‍♂️ FinOps Job Offer

Build the next FinOps product with The Duckbill Group

The Duckbill Group is throwing our hat into the ring by building a new FinOps product and we're looking for another engineer for the team. The role is on-site in San Francisco (we'll help with relocation!).

Come help us build something amazing.

FinOps
FinOps in 90 Days: Automate, train, and govern for effective cloud use!

If you were put in charge of FinOps in a large company, what would you do? This article shares a plan for the first 90 days. Here’s the plan:

Create a FinOps Target Operating Model. This includes:

• A vision for what FinOps should achieve

• A strategy to reach that vision

• A way to govern the process

• Train people

Help everyone understand their role in FinOps. Teach them how to do their part. Don't wait to automate. Do it right from the start. This includes:

• Set up automation early

• Using code to set up cloud resources

• Automatically tagging resources

• Sending optimization ideas to engineers

Focus on good habits, not quick fixes: Instead of trying to optimize costs later, prevent high costs from the beginning. Use policies and good practices to keep spending in check. This approach gives you a strong start in FinOps. It sets up good practices from day one, rather than trying to fix problems later

The Complete Article Here

🎖️ Mention of Honour
What about European FinOps Events in 2025?

In an interesting article, Anderson Oliveira reflects on the FinOps XE Event, held in Barcelona in November 2024. It was a big success, bringing together experts from around the world to discuss financial operations for cloud computing. Some key points from the event:

• FinOps is expanding beyond just the public cloud to include software-as-a-service and data centers.

• Artificial intelligence was a major topic, both using AI for FinOps and managing costs for AI projects.

• FOCUS, a data standard for cloud billing, is gaining wide adoption.

Despite the event's success, the FinOps Foundation likely won't host another large European conference soon. This is due to scheduling conflicts with other major tech events and the work required to organize them.

The author hopes there will be more European FinOps events in the future, as it's difficult for many to travel to US conferences.

While disappointing for European FinOps practitioners, the success of this first event shows there's strong interest in FinOps across Europe.

Read the complete article here

🏆 Quick Wins

Announcements

Summary of all the announcements the AWS Cloud Financial Management (CFM) team made in 2024 re:Invent

AWS announced custom billing views, a new feature within AWS Billing and Cost Management that allows to grant member accounts in the organization access to cost and usage views spanning multiple member accounts

Articles & Podcasts

FinOps Más Que Costes w/ Adrian Olmeda: How to handle FinOps in the Corporate World (Consultant, PwC)

This article explains how to implement FinOps and GreenOps strategies for managing cloud costs and reducing environmental impact.

Some people on LinkedIn are saying FinOps is over or not important. But this is not true.

Professional Spotlight
Larry Advey

FinOps Fred Flintstone

I’ve been able to connect with Larry lately a few times, as he is an avid reader of FinOps Weekly. Great to know more about how a large company such as Twilio is handling FinOps. They have a great guy handling it!

Check the Professional of this Week

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