How Smartsheet does FinOps Engineering
Learn how they reduced their latency and costs by improving their Cloud Architecture
Victor Garcia
May 04, 2025
Big Companies
How Smartsheet Reduced 80% of Latency & Saved 20% in AWS Lambda
Smartsheet, a cloud-based work management platform, made their system faster and cheaper to run by making smart changes to how they handle user requests.
The company helps millions of people work together on documents at the same time. When users make changes, the system needs to respond very quickly to keep everything running smoothly. They used AWS Lambda, and there was a small problem - sometimes new requests had to wait for the system to "warm up," (cold starts) which made things slower. To fix this, they:
Kept parts of the system ready ahead of time
Made the system adjust automatically based on how many people were using it
Used special computer chips that work faster and cost less
The results were impressive:
Response times got 83% faster
They saved 20% on running costs
The system now works better during busy times and saves money during quiet periods
This shows how small technical changes can make a big difference in how well computer systems work.
FINOPS EVENTS
Stop Cloud Waste: Master Optimization & Governance This Week!
Tired of reactive fire-fighting with cloud bills? Join the Cloud Usage Optimization & Governance Summit – a LIVE online event presented by FinOps Weekly and powered by Stacklet – happening this Wednesday, May 7th!
Time is running out, and spots are strictly limited.
(Date/Time): Wednesday, May 7th, 2025
11:00 AM - 2:00 PM EST
5:00 PM - 8:00 PM CET (Madrid Time)
This isn't just about simple cost reduction. This summit is crucial for FinOps Leaders, Engineers, and Cloud Managers who need real, scalable strategies to embed cost efficiency into their engineering culture and workflows.
In just 3 hours, you'll discover how to:
Implement Sustainable Governance: Build policies and frameworks that actually scale and last.
Slash Cloud Waste: Apply proven best practices and case studies to optimize workloads immediately.
Align Teams: Bridge the gap between Engineering and Finance with effective strategies for shared targets.
Stop letting cloud costs kill your budget. Start implementing proactive strategies that deliver measurable results.
GCP
BigQuery & Composer CUDs: Unlock up to 20% Savings
Google has added new ways to save money on BigQuery and Cloud Composer services through Committed Use Discounts (CUDs). These discounts can save you up to 20% for 3-year commitments and 10% for 1-year commitments. Here's what you need to know:
The discounts work by committing to spend a set amount per hour. You can share these savings across different projects in the same region. You'll need separate commitments for each region you use.
What's included: BigQuery Editions usage. Composer 3 computing costs. BigQuery Data Governance
What's not included: BigQuery storage costs. On-demand query costs
Before deciding to use these discounts, consider:
If you use multiple services together (BigQuery, Composer, Data Governance)
If your usage stays steady throughout the day
If you already have other BigQuery commitments
A real example shows that for some cases, traditional BigQuery slot commitments might save more money. However, if you regularly use Cloud Composer 3 or BigQuery Data Governance, these new discounts could be worthwhile.
The best approach might be mixing 1-year and 3-year commitments while covering about 60-75% of your usual spending. This gives you room to adjust as your needs change.
AZURE / MICROSOFT
Microsoft Cost Updates April 2025
Microsoft has shared their April 2025 updates for Cost Management, bringing new tools to help users track and control their cloud spending.
The biggest news is that Microsoft Copilot is now fully available in Azure. The Export feature has also gotten better. Users can now:
Export more types of data including price sheets and reservation details
Choose between CSV or Parquet file formats
Set up better security for their exported data
Create multiple exports at once
For learning resources, Microsoft added new videos covering:
Basic overview of Cost Management
How to analyze costs
Setting up budgets and alerts
Managing scheduled exports
Working with Azure OpenAI reservations
They've also added new ways to save money:
Better recommendations for Kubernetes services
Automatic scaling for MongoDB
Improved disk performance tools
New backup options for PostgreSQL
VM hibernation for graphics processing machines
FINOPS AS CODE
🧑💻 Efficient AWS WAF Logging with Terraform & CloudWatch
AWS WAF helps block traffic, but tracking what gets blocked is just as important. The setup uses three main parts:
An S3 bucket to store logs long-term
A CloudWatch Log Group for quick access to recent data
A smart filter that only keeps records of blocked requests
The best part? You only pay for storing the important stuff - the actual blocked requests. This means less noise and lower costs.
Want to see what's happening right now? Just use CloudWatch's Live Tail feature. Need to look into past issues? CloudWatch Logs Insights lets you search through your data with simple queries. You can make this even better by:
Setting up automatic exports to S3 for longer storage
Creating alerts when there are lots of blocks
Making dashboards for different teams
All the code is ready to use with Terraform - just copy, change the names, and you're good to go.
📺️ PODCAST
How to Make Engineers Apply FinOps
Get ready for an amazing episode of the FinOps Weekly Podcast as another expert drops their incredible insights!
What role does engineering have in FinOps? We explore this with Jeremy Chaplin, focusing on team collaboration, cost-reduction strategies, and the necessity of a shared language.
🎖️ MENTION OF HONOUR
Understanding Income Statements for FinOps Success
The article explains how to read and understand an income statement, written for tech professionals who may not be familiar with financial documents. The income statement works like a funnel, starting with money coming in at the top (revenue) and showing various costs that get subtracted as you move down.Here's what you need to know about the main parts:
Revenue (Top Line): This is all the money a company makes from selling its products or services.
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): These are the direct costs needed to create and deliver products or services. For cloud companies, this includes some of their cloud computing bills and support staff costs.
Gross Margin: What's left after subtracting COGS from revenue.
Operating Costs: These include things like research, marketing, and sales expenses that get subtracted after gross margin.
Understanding the income statement helps technical staff see the bigger picture of their company's financial health and make better decisions about where to focus their efforts.
FINOPS
FinOps Weekly Extra
I’ve decided to have a section with additional items to replace the old “Quick Wins” Section. Lots of content happening in the industry:
Yan Cui shared slides from his talk at AWS Community Day Prague about saving money with serverless computing.
Managing costs for AI systems is becoming as important as tracking cloud expenses.
Cloud Cost Visibility ≠ Cloud Cost Visibility. Really interesting article by Erik
Join the FinOps Weekly Community
We just launched a community and we are looking forward to have you with us!
An open space for making FinOps for Everyone a reality
NEWS
Announcements
Providers
AWS Lambda introduces tiered pricing for Amazon CloudWatch logs and additional logging destinations
AWS Lambda is changing how they charge customers for their service starting August 1, 2025. This update affects the way they bill for the startup time of Lambda functions.
AWS has stopped offering Reserved Instance (RI) options for their newest RDS database types. This change affects many recent models released since October 2024.
Vendors
ProsperOps Autonomous Discount Management Launches on Azure Marketplace
Synyega’s shared how Microsoft are increase the prices for a range of on-premises software products from July 2025.
🏆 Quick Wins Resources
Evergreen FinOps Resources to apply Today!
Professional Spotlight
Blessing Ogechi Nwojiji
An Example to Follow in FinOps
Today we feature one of the most active members of the FinOps Weekly Community! Blessings passion and willing to learn FinOps (as one of our Mastering FinOps first students) it’s incredible. She has a bright future in the space and I’m super glad to have her with us!
That’s all for this week. See you next Sunday!
Before You Go, Here’s How We Can Collaborate
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