In partnership with

WHAT’S ON THE MENU 🍽️ 

• FOCUS Sandbox Tool

• Migrating EKS Nodes to Graviton

• Azure Tagging using Powershell Scripts

• Mention of Honour: FinOps Community Closes the Year on Top

• Job Opportunity by Duckbill Group

• Professional Spotlight with the Brazil FinOps Leader

Collaborate with FinOps Weekly

FOCUS
FOCUS Sandbox is Now Available!

The FinOps Foundation has created a new tool called the FOCUS Sandbox. This tool helps people understand how to use FOCUS, which is a standard way to format cloud billing data.

The FOCUS Sandbox lets users run queries on real (but anonymous) billing data from different cloud providers. This helps them see how FOCUS works in real life.

To create the FOCUS Sandbox, they combined real data from AWS, GCP, and OCI with sample data from Microsoft. This approach highlighted how much simpler it is to work with FOCUS data compared to standard cloud billing data.

Using the FOCUS Sandbox is straightforward: start by selecting a use case from the provided list, then choose your desired date range. Review the SQL query, run it, and explore the results to gain valuable insights.

Try it Now!

In partnership with Stacklet
Preventing Cloud Waste and Inefficiencies Through Continuous Usage Optimization

Cloud management can be challenging, with over 40% of cloud spending wasted and 62% of companies losing $25,000 or more monthly. Automation, strong policies, and proactive monitoring are key strategies to reduce costs.

Tools like Infrastructure as Code (IaC) enable early issue detection, while integrations with Slack and Jira streamline workflows. Post-deployment monitoring identifies inefficiencies like unused resources, helping teams adopt cost-conscious practices.

Organizations can cut cloud expenses by up to 50% by fostering a culture of efficiency and adopting smarter cloud strategies. Explore Stacklet’s solutions for actionable ways to reduce cloud waste and save costs.

AWS, Kubernetes
Migrating from x86 to AWS Graviton on Amazon EKS using Karpenter [CODE INCLUDED]

AWS has released a complete guide on how to move your Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) nodes to use AWS Graviton processors. As you probably already know, AWS Graviton can give better performance at a lower cost. Here

To ensure your applications run smoothly on both regular and Graviton processors, start by creating container images compatible with both architectures. Once the images are ready, configure your system to use them. Next, use Karpenter to introduce Graviton nodes into your cluster. Gradually transition your applications to these new nodes, taking a careful, phased approach. Throughout the process, monitor performance and stability to address any issues and optimize the transition effectively.

The article gives tips for each step. For example, it shows how to build images for different processors and how to set up Karpenter to add new nodes. Start with less important services first. This lets you test things out before moving your main services. After the change, you can use special dashboards to see how much money you're saving with Graviton.

Read it Now [Code Included]!

Azure
Azure Resource Tagging with PowerShell scripts [CODE INCLUDED]

Managing Azure resource tags is essential for organizing and tracking cloud resources, and I’ve found that PowerShell scripts make this process both efficient and reliable. Setting up PowerShell for Azure is straightforward—you can either install the Az module on your local computer or use the Azure Cloud Shell directly in the portal.

Once configured, you can easily identify resources missing required tags by running a script that generates a report for quick review. To enforce tag policies, PowerShell allows you to apply specific tags to resources in bulk, ensuring consistency across your environment. Updating and removing tags is just as simple—you can replace tag values, delete specific tags, or clear all tags from individual resources, resource groups, or even entire subscriptions.

Using PowerShell for tagging not only saves time but also reduces errors, helping you maintain consistent governance.

See with the Code Included!

In Partnership with Turbo360
Save $1M on Azure: Proven Methods for Cost Optimization

A global energy infrastructure company using Azure for over six years discovered a staggering $1.2M in potential savings. While Azure Advisor offered limited recommendations, Turbo360 went deeper, identifying 19 overlooked VMs with $60K in savings.

With our application teams were empowered to act, uncovering 336 downgrade opportunities and achieving savings from $10 to $12,500 per instance. By optimizing resources and leveraging Azure reservations, they’re on track to save $1M in the coming months. Want to know how they did it?

Learning
Start 2025 with Top Resources for FinOps Growth!

FinOps is a growing field in cloud financial management. Many people are setting goals to start or improve their FinOps skills in the new year. Here are the resources highlighted by Benjamin van der Maas for 2025:

For beginners, two blog posts: "A Complete Learning Path for FinOps" and "I achieved all FinOps Certifications"

For analysts, polars: A fast data processing library for Python and other languages. Useful for handling large datasets efficiently

For engineers, the FOCUS converter: A tool to standardize cloud cost data & SQL practice using the FOCUS Use-Case Library.

For experienced professionals, a recommendation for understanding AI in cloud services & resources for learning about AWS Bedrock and Azure's AI offerings

The Complete List

🎖️ Mention of Honour
Rewinding with FinOps Meetups

All my LinkedIn has been full of meetups ending the year. I love to see the FinOps community grow with these initiatives.

BrazilClouds: FinOps Nightmares

We could hear some scary stories about PoC resources that weren't shut down after completion and companies without any financial control. Every FinOps practitioner's nightmare!

Industry leaders shared their journeys, insights, and strategies for optimizing cloud spending and maximizing financial control. We learned some of the ways companies have managed and reduced their biggest cost nightmares.

FinOps Berlin Meetup

Our friends from Berlin hosted a lovely Meetup in Berlin to join before Christmas and have some FinOps Fun! I was there (remotely) dropping some thoughts on 2025!

Cloud Brew FinOps Sessions

What do you get when you talk about FinOps during CloudBrew? They got a room filled with interested people which gave a big energy boost. Here are the slides from the presentation

Women in FinOps Meetup

With a great initiative in London, the Women in FinOps meetup was a total success based on the information I could see. Great to have more women improving business value!

FinOps Weekly 1st Community Call

We started a recurrent community call within the FinOps Weekly Telegram Community. We’ll gather every Friday at 4 PM CET Time for fun and discussion. We had a lovely talk this Friday, and I look forward to seeing you on the 20th!

👷‍♂️ 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.

🏆 Quick Wins

Announcements

Amazon has added a new feature called Predictive Scaling to their Elastic Container Service (ECS). Predictive Scaling uses machine learning to forecast when an application will need more resources.

AWS has launched new Amazon EC2 I8g instances for storage-heavy tasks. These instances use AWS Graviton4 processors, which are 60% faster than the previous generation.

Amazon has made its Bedrock Guardrails service cheaper. This service helps companies use AI safely. The price for content filters is now 80% less. It costs $0.15 for every 1,000 units of text.

Events

FinOps Weekly Community Call - 20th of December (4 PM)

Articles & Podcasts

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

Dissecting gRPC, PubSub with advanced network sensor

Shifting FinOps Left: the coding phase by Jeremy Nancel

Professional Spotlight
Pedro Drumond

Leading Brazilian FinOps Community

I’ve had the pleasure of working together with Pedro for some time. He’s an amazing professional who drops great content in Portuguese that we share in FinOps Weekly translated. He ran an amazing meetup online yesterday, I love this guy!

Check the Professional of this Week

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3. FinOps Services: Our Partner Cloud Cost Control provides FinOps Services you can leverage today. Feel free to request a discovery call.