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Use FinOps practices to tie AI spend directly to business value.

Learn how with the AI Cost Optimization Playbook.

The FinOps Framework by FinOps Foundation just got a major update for 2026, and it shows how much the field has grown up. The 2026 Framework changes reflect what many of you are already living: FinOps is now a strategic function that sits at the table with executives, manages value across multiple technology types, and works closely with other IT disciplines.

Executive Strategy Alignment: It formalizes what mature FinOps teams have been doing quietly for years: connecting technology spending to business strategy. Instead of just reporting what was spent last month, you're now helping executives decide what to spend next year and why.

FinOps Scopes Got Smarter: A Scope is now clearly defined as a segment of spending that aligns to business needs, like a specific product, cost center, or environment. Your Scope defines which people you engage, which activities you focus on, and what success looks like for that specific business context.

Five Technology Category Pages: The Framework now includes detailed guidance for five technology types:

Public Cloud (the original focus)

SaaS (managed software spending)

Data Center (on-premises infrastructure)

AI (the newest and often most unpredictable spending)

Data Cloud Platforms (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery)

Updated Capabilities for Broader Technology. Several existing capabilities got renamed and expanded:

Workload Optimization became Usage Optimization. Policy & Governance became Governance, Policy & Risk. FinOps Tools & Services became Automation, Tools & Services

Benchmarking became KPI & Benchmarking. Architecting for Cloud became Architecting & Workload Placement. Cloud Sustainability became Sustainability

Working With Other Disciplines

The Framework now explicitly addresses how FinOps connects with related fields like IT Asset Management, IT Financial Management, Sustainability, Security, and Enterprise Architecture.

Read the Full Update

Together with CloudThrottle Cloud Budget Simulator

Amazon Redshift optimizations now speed up first-run queries by 7x, creating rightsizing opportunities for clusters previously oversized for latency.

CloudWatch now supports auto-enabling EC2 detailed monitoring across an Organization.

Read All AWS Updates

Database Savings Plans now offer up to 35% discounts via flexible hourly commitments that allow architectural and regional changes without losing savings.

The Emissions Impact Dashboard will be retired in March 2027

Read All Azure Updates

BigQuery ML now auto-deploys models to Vertex AI with automatic undeployment features and reservation affinity.

A new query execution heatmap identifies slot-time hotspots within SQL stages.

Read All GCP Updates

Standard cloud optimizations: reserved instances and basic rightsizing, are no longer enough. With the rapid rise of AI infrastructure and GPUs, cloud spend is outpacing traditional playbooks.

Join us to discover how leading teams are moving from reaction to prevention:

📅​ Date: April 16th
🕗​ Time: 11:00 AM EST / 17:00 CEST
📍 Online

I explain in a simple way what FinOps is: not just about reducing cloud costs, but maximizing business value from tech spend. I explore the FinOps Framework and how to identify your FinOps persona to help build a unified FinOps culture across the organization.

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AWS Marketplace has become a hidden risk for companies trying to control their cloud spending. Jordi shows us the problem: Engineers with admin access can buy third-party software through AWS Marketplace with just a few clicks. They think they're just installing a tool. But they're actually signing legal contracts and spending company money without going through proper approval channels. The fix involves two steps:

First, use AWS Identity and Access Management to remove Marketplace buying permissions from most employees. Only FinOps and Procurement teams should be able to complete purchases.

Second, create a simple request process. When an engineer needs a tool, they submit a request through the normal purchasing system. This lets the right teams review security, legal terms, and costs before anyone clicks buy.

Good governance means saying yes through the right door, not just saying no to everything.

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​Join us at the heart of Hawthorne as we kick off our first-ever LA FinOps Weekly Meetup at the lively Common Space Brewery!

Hosted by FinOps Weekly Regional Leader Diana Molski, this event is your chance to dive into the world of FinOps while enjoying good company and great brews.

​We promise an evening of engaging conversations and a relaxed vibe.

First beer on us, limited slots!

📅​ Date: April 9, 2026
🕗​ Time: 5:00pm PT
📍 Common Space Brewery | Hawthorne, California​

A cloud architect just cut $300,000 per year from their AWS bill without changing a single line of code or redesigning any systems. The secret was simple: they looked at what they were actually using versus what they were paying for. The team was spending about $25,000 per month on AWS Lambda and RDS services.

Every Lambda function was configured with 2GB of memory, but most were only using a fraction of that. The fix came down to two main changes:

Lambda memory reduction: They dropped memory allocation from 2GB to 768MB across all functions. This alone cut Lambda costs by 61 percent, from $800 per day to $290 per day. That's $14,000 saved every month.

RDS storage optimization: The database was using io2 storage with provisioned IOPS, which is built for extremely demanding workloads. After checking the actual input and output patterns, they switched to gp3 storage instead. This saved another $11,000 per month while keeping performance stable.

One important note: they held off on Savings Plans during this process. While Savings Plans offer discounts of 10 to 20 percent, it makes more sense to commit after you've optimized your actual usage. Otherwise you're locking in discounts on waste.

Daily Lambda costs dropped from $800 to $290 starting in early February when the changes went live. What makes this story worth paying attention to is how common this problem is.

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Cloud teams move fast and finance teams move slow. That timing gap is where cloud costs get messy. The real problem is what Diana Molski’s article calls "decision duration": how long a choice sits in production before it becomes expensive or painful to change. Some examples of how this plays out:

An oversized instance everyone knows about has short duration. You can fix it next sprint. A storage setup that works fine until you need to recover data has longer duration. Changing it means rethinking your whole backup approach.

Most FinOps work focuses on measuring and reporting what already happened. The harder work is shortening how long bad decisions can live before someone notices.

One practical approach is putting cost data in the same tools engineers already use for monitoring and operations. If a deploy suddenly doubles your infrastructure needs, that should show up the same day in the same dashboard where you check system health. Not in a budget review three weeks later.

Teams that handle this well share a few patterns. Cost shows up early in design conversations, not as a veto but as one input alongside performance and reliability.

Read More

FinOps Lead

I’m a results-driven Azure DevFinOps Engineer, passionate about merging cloud engineering with financial accountability to deliver cost-efficient, high-performance solutions at scale.

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Naming conventions is essential to avoid a Cloud mess.

Tagging is one of the core skills to govern Cloud Resources.

Cloud Governance is a core skill for FinOps.

Learn both in our course Tagging & Naming conventions with our discount code only for FinOps Weekly Readers.

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P.S. Azure FinOps Course already started. Thanks everyone who joined there.