TOGETHER WITH KION
Is Your AI Spend Paying Off?
The real challenge with managing AI spend is understanding not only where the money is going, but whether it’s creating business value.
That means being able to connect token spend to the teams, use cases, and business outcomes behind it, then deciding where to set guardrails and where continued investment makes sense.
Our latest webinar recap introduces a practical See It. Control It. Scale It. framework:
✓ See It: Create visibility and accountability for AI token spend
✓ Control It: Put budgets, policies, and guardrails in place
✓ Scale It: Connect spend to outcomes and determine where to invest next
The critical question isn’t how much you’re spending on AI, but what you’re getting for that spend.
See how FinOps teams can evolve their approach to manage AI spend from cost to outcome.
COST VISIBILITY
Case Study: A2A’s FinOps System
A2A, a major Italian energy company, had a big cloud money problem. They use three different cloud providers: AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Each one sends bills in a different format. That made it nearly impossible to see total spending in one place.
To fix this, A2A built a FinOps platform on AWS that pulls all this cost data into one common format called FOCUS.
This gave finance teams, executives, and app owners one clear view of spending instead of three separate ones.
A2A saved 1.5 million euros in a year through cost optimization actions. They also caught cost problems early, avoiding 50,000 euros in daily waste.
Budget reviews that used to take days now take just a few hours. One team even found that logging tools were eating up 80% of an app's costs, and fixed it fast.
For any company juggling multiple cloud providers, this is a real playbook worth studying.
WEBINAR
Finding Cloud Waste Billing Data Misses
A live conversation with me on the cloud waste your cost tooling can't see. I break down audience-submitted waste live in the closing segment.
📅 September 23rd, 2026
🕚 5:00 PM Spain / 11:00 PM ET
CLOUD PROVIDERS
AWS Adds Billing Anomaly Tools, GCP Boosts Reservation Flexibility, Azure Tackles AI Agent Costs
AWS
Billing dashboards now show cost anomalies for free, making it easier to spot unusual spending next to budgets and Savings Plan coverage.
Billing Conductor supports custom rates and usage tiers, helping teams model exact pricing for chargeback and showback.
Direct Connect adds flat-rate pricing for 10 and 100 Gbps links, removing per-GB fees for more predictable network costs.
Read All AWS Updates
Google Cloud
Compute Engine reservations can now switch between shared and single-project setups, making it easier to move reserved capacity where it's needed.
Cloud Run jobs can now delay non-urgent tasks up to 12 hours to grab lower pricing windows.
Read All GCP Updates
Azure
Microsoft Foundry adds cost controls for AI agents, giving teams project-level spend tracking, quotas, and anomaly alerts to manage AI costs and prove ROI.
Read All Azure Updates
EVENTS
FinOps Weekly Summit 2026
Join FinOps professionals at the FinOps Weekly Summit 2026 and discover how to:
Transform FinOps from reactive cost control into strategic business value
Build scalable unit economics for the AI era
Learn proven strategies from organizations managing billions in cloud spend
📅 October 20 & 21, 2026 - 9AM ET / 3PM CEST
VIDEOS & PODCASTS
AWS Experts Reveal How to Optimize AI Costs
We sit down with AWS experts Adam and Loïc to discuss AI cost optimization on AWS and how FinOps practices can help organizations gain visibility, allocate spend, and improve the efficiency of their AI workloads.
CLOUD COST OPTIMIZATION
Monitoring FO Cloud‑Hosted Machines’ Azure Storage and Saving Costs
Cloud storage costs can creep up fast in Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations environments. This is a simple way to catch that waste before it hits your bill.
Old files from past versions often sit in Azure Resource Groups long after anyone needs them.
Check Resource Groups often for large files tied to old builds.
Use Azure Monitor and Storage Explorer to track how storage grows over time.
Confirm the current environment version through Lifecycle Services before deleting anything.
Only remove VHD files in the product-AX folder, never touch files in the dynamics deployments folder since those run your live systems.
Old demo database backups can also be deleted to free up space.
Write down every deletion for audit records and compliance checks.
The payoff is real: lower monthly storage bills, clearer ownership of cloud resources, and no surprise cost spikes from forgotten files. Regular cleanup paired with good documentation keeps both your budget and your governance team happy.
FINOPS GOVERNANCE
Your S3 Lifecycle Policy Is Probably Lying to You
A company had an S3 lifecycle policy running for years. It showed up green on every dashboard. It passed every audit.
But the rule pointed to data-backup/ and the actual files were named data_backup/.
One underscore instead of a hyphen meant every object it was supposed to manage sat in expensive storage the whole time, and no tool ever caught it.
A policy existing on paper does not mean it is actually working. Checking a box that says "lifecycle policy enabled" tells you nothing about whether it matches your real file paths.
You need three things together to know the truth:
What data actually exists,
What the rule says
What it costs. Most tools only show one of these at a time.
Object count matters as much as total size. Two storage buckets can hold the exact same data size, but one saves money in hours while the other takes four years to pay back, because of extra monitoring fees on lots of small files.
Good guardrails matter more than big savings numbers. Capping estimates at what a bucket actually spends, and never trusting stale snapshots, keeps recommendations honest.
The smartest fix is catching these mismatches before they ship, not months or years later, by testing lifecycle rules against real file paths during code review.
Small technical mistakes can hide big money problems for years. Trust proof, not paperwork, when it comes to your cloud storage bill.
🎖️ MENTION OF HONOUR
Complete Guide To The FinOps Certified Professional (FCP) Certification
Cloud bills keep growing, especially with AI workloads eating into budgets.
The FinOps Foundation's new Professional certification (FCP) is built for people who manage that spending at scale.
It covers real problems like standardizing billing data across AWS, Azure and GCP, planning cloud commitments around seasonal demand, and controlling costs when a new AI chatbot causes a 300% spending spike.
The salary data backs up the value. FinOps Practice Leads earn $180,000 to $210,000 a year. Directors of Cloud Economics can earn $200,000 to $280,000 or more.
FinOps Weekly readers can save 20% using code FINOPSWEEKLY_20 at checkout.
The certification takes real effort, with live case studies, a community project, and a two-hour scenario exam.
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Discounts on FinOps Certifications
Use code: FINOPSWEEKLY_20 to get an instant 20% discount on the most prestigious certification bundles:
FinOps Certified Practitioner
FinOps Certified Engineer
FinOps Certified FOCUS Analyst
FinOps for AI
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