US Defense Department FinOps Strategy [PDF Inside]
Learn how the US DoD Strategy is defined and share your thoughts in the replies
In partnership with
You read correctly. US Government information below, see what’s the strategy to save some of the tax money in the cloud.
What also happened this week:
GCP (finally) moving the needle and releasing FinOps Features
AWS Valkey movement results in a significant price cut
Azure FinOps Best Practices Available
Mention of Honour: New Azure FinOps Book Release 📖
Job Offers
Professional Spotlight with an Entrepreneur in the Cloud
Today we have all three major providers FinOps News! I’m crying with happiness. Let’s start, shall we?
US
US Defense Department FinOps Strategy in PDF
The Department of Defense (DOD) has released its Cloud Financial Operations Strategy to the public. This strategy aims to help the DOD manage and optimize cloud costs better. The goal is to improve decision-making for architecture, budgets, and investments.
Really interesting to see how Governments are starting to implement FinOps. We talked about it in a previous edition regarding the UK Home Department.
It seems like the Defense Areas have a huge spending in the Cloud. And due to the current situation where more investment is going to these areas, FinOps is a mandatory step to keep the efficiency.
Leslie Beavers, the acting DOD chief information officer, said this strategy will make the DOD a better user and buyer of cloud services.
The DOD needs to improve how it buys cloud services for two main reasons:
Cloud technology is key for modernizing the military, which is needed as warfare becomes more digital.
Cloud costs are going up while military budgets are getting tighter.
The Enterprise Cloud Management Board will oversee putting this strategy into action.
Will this impact the finances of the Government at some point?
Find the complete PDF in the link below
In partnership with Envisor
The CloudHealth Alternative You Didn’t Know Existed
Are you hitting a wall with your FinOps platform? If you’re like most large organizations, you started on Cloudabilty and switched a year or two later to CloudHealth in search of more flexibility. Or vice versa.
Either way, you’re likely still struggling to deliver on your FinOps objectives with your current platform.
Is your company struggling with...
Integrating M&A FinOps data
Blending sensitive enterprise data with FinOps tooling to calculate TCO and unit economics
Managing bespoke RBAC controls and a lack of RLS
Hosting in-region or in-country
Creating new reports and visualizations due to rigid, inflexible tooling
An inability to drill down to the root cause
Envisor delivers the same powerful features as the leading cloud cost management platforms. It is built on an open data lake architecture with a Power BI front end that provides complete control over your FinOps visualizations.
by Keith Knowles from Envisor
GCP
GCP Moving their FinOps Nest with Anomaly Detection
Google Cloud has introduced a new tool called Cost Anomaly Detection. Finally, GCP provides some updates on their FinOps Tooling, which has been almost stopped since FinOps X.
Here's how it works:
It uses AI to learn your normal spending patterns.
It checks your spending every hour.
If it sees something unusual, it tells you right away.
It shows you exactly where the extra spending is coming from.
It can send alerts to the right people in your company.
You can set it up to only tell you about big changes in spending.
You can give feedback to help it learn what's normal for your business.
This new tool is free for all Google Cloud customers.
AWS
AWS discounts Valkey over Redis: More than a Price Cut!
AWS has made a big change in how they price their services. They've led the creation of a fork of Redis, called Valkey with other players and residing in the Linux Foundation. Now, AWS is selling Valkey services for much less than their Redis services.
Valkey is very similar to Redis. It works the same way and has the same features. The main difference is that it costs less.
Here's what this means:
Customers can save money by switching to Valkey.
AWS wants people to start thinking of Valkey as its own thing, separate from Redis.
AWS is still making money, even with the lower prices.
This move is good for customers because they pay less.
It's also good for AWS because it helps them stay ahead in the cloud computing world.
Valkey isn't just a copy of Redis with a new name. It has more people working on it and more new features than Redis.
This price cut is bigger than usual for AWS.
It shows that even in the competitive cloud computing market, there's still room for surprises that benefit customers.
Well explained in the article by Corey Quinn on the Duckbill Group available below
Azure
Azure FinOps Best Practices Released
Microsoft has created a new tool called the FinOps Best Practices Library. This library is part of the FinOps Toolkit.
The library shows you how Azure makes recommendations to save money. It uses Azure Resource Graph (ARG) queries.
You can now see and change these queries. This helps you:
Understand how Azure makes its suggestions
Adjust the queries to fit your company's needs
Example of unused disks in Azure that might be wasting money:
resources
| where type =~ 'microsoft.compute/disks' and managedBy == ""This library works with the Cost Optimization workbook in Azure. The workbook helps companies find ways to save money in the cloud.
Azure is making a significant community effort with their Azure FinOps Toolkit, I have to be honest there.
Looking forward to seeing it grow and keep up with the AWS moves on the community site to help all you FinOps!
Together with Turbo360
From Insight to Impact: How This Tool Drives Cost Savings
• Cost Allocation: Easily split Azure costs across teams, departments, and customers—eliminating guesswork.
• Anomaly Detection: Recognize cost spikes at the lowest levels (teams/departments) and rectify them for improved profitability.
• Easy Optimization Tips: Give your teams instant access to tailored cost-saving insights with a single click so they can manage better
• Tailored Cost Data: Enable all your stakeholders to have precise figures for smarter decisions.
• Automation: Automate resizing of resources to suit the demand
Mike from Turbo360
🎖️ Mention of Honour
FinOps Mas Que Costes: Podcast Release
Azure FinOps Essentials is a new book that aims to help people manage costs in Microsoft's cloud platform, Azure.
The book covers many topics:
How to use Azure Cost Management
Ways to save money on cloud resources
Tools for tracking spending and setting budgets
Creating custom reports to show financial information
Making sure cloud use follows company rules
It's written for people who work with Azure, like cloud architects and IT professionals. The goal is to teach readers how to use Azure more efficiently and save money.
The book includes real examples and case studies to show how these ideas work in practice. It also looks at what might change in the future for managing costs in Azure.
A new book to add to the shelf of FinOps content, for those Azure FinOps
🏆 Quick Wins
Announcements
Amazon EC2 now supports Optimize CPUs post instance launch. This new ability lets users modify the number of vCPUs and turn off hyperthreading on stopped EC2 instances. The main benefit is saving money on vCPU-based licensing costs. This feature is especially useful for customers who bring their own licenses for commercial databases like Microsoft SQL Server.
Articles & Podcasts
New Episode of FinOps Más Que Costes, our Spanish FinOps Podcast with Borja Martinez, on how he transitioned from a physiotherapist to the First FinOps Professional in Spain.
Gamifying your FinOps? Reddit thread at r/FinOps People is finding fun ways to make saving money in tech more exciting. Someone suggested using these events to help others. The money saved from finding ways to cut costs could be given to charity for a few months. These fun events seem to help tech teams work together to save money while having a good time.
AWS has a surprising way of handling stopped RDS (Relational Database Service) instances. Unlike EC2 instances that stay stopped until you start them, RDS instances come back to life after 7 days. RDS Zombie Apocalypsee !?
AWS created a solution called "protect configuration" in their End User Messaging console. This lets developers block SMS messages to specific countries. This simple fix, which takes just a few minutes to set up, can save developers money and prevent headaches from unwanted sign-ups. Great post by Avi Kenian
Secrets of AWS EC2 Cost Plan Types: An exceptional, in-depth guide by Chris St. John. Choosing the right plan depends on your specific needs. For example, Spot Instances work well for jobs that can be interrupted, while Reserved Instances are better for always-on applications. Learn how to pick correctly.
Professional Spotlight
Narciso Cerezo
Leading FinOps in Banking
Narciso will be speaking on FinOps XE, as he’s one of the most prominent FinOps figures in Spain. Always insightful in his content and shares, I recommend following him and of course, going to his talk at the Barcelona Event.
👩🏭 FinOps Job offers
Permanent links (i.e. FinOps Job site) and FinOps Job Offers online.
That’s all for this week. See you next Sunday!
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