FinOps realms

Each realm contains a set of capabilities that organizations can use to achieve desired outcomes. An organization should develop the capabilities that provide value based on its needs and current FinOps maturity level. Some capabilities may not apply to all organizations. While not every organization invests in all capabilities, any organization that uses the cloud and adopts FinOps performs activities related to these four realms.

Activities in the realms do not have a specific order. An organization can perform activities in multiple realms in parallel as it builds capabilities for its FinOps practice.

All realms and capabilities are interdependent. Together, they form the operational model for a FinOps practice. This model includes all the practices that organizations of any industry, structure, size, or maturity level need to succeed.

The first three realms cover the FinOps practices required for successful cloud usage. The fourth realm describes the activities needed for the FinOps practice itself to succeed.

FinOps practices must follow all FinOps principles. Therefore, performing activities in all realms helps create a successful FinOps culture and improves the organization's alignment with its cloud strategy.

Understand cloud costs

The goal of this realm is to provide a better understanding of an organization's cloud usage. In this realm, organizations collect all the information needed for their FinOps practice. This includes direct and estimated cloud costs, cloud usage, observability, cloud utilization, sustainability data, and other datasets required by the other FinOps realms. Activities in this realm define organizational metadata to classify, allocate, and summarize cloud costs and usage. They also establish reporting and analysis processes to make this data available to all FinOps stakeholders.

Explore the realm: Understand cloud costs

Realm capabilities

Quantify business value

Capabilities in this realm connect cloud usage with cloud costs and the business value created, ensuring that value data is transparent and meets expectations. In this realm, organizations incorporate monetary and non-monetary cloud costs into budgets, create forecasts based on historical information and future plans, establish and measure metrics such as technical and organizational Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and conduct benchmarking between teams, business units, and other organizations.

Explore the realm: Quantify business value

Realm capabilities

Optimize cloud costs

This realm focuses on the efficient use of cloud resources. It ensures that an organization uses resources only when they provide value, procures them at the lowest acceptable cost, and minimizes environmental impact to achieve its overall goals. Organizations measure efficiency in various ways, including monetary costs, carbon emissions, and traditional Information Technology (IT) operational efficiency metrics. Capabilities in this realm enable organizations to manage the type, usage duration, quantity, and cost of their cloud resources. These capabilities also cover architecture modernization, sustainability goals for the FinOps team, and the use of licenses and usage-based Software as a Service (SaaS) products.

Explore the realm: Optimize cloud costs

Realm capabilities

Manage the FinOps practice

This realm drives continuous improvement and comprehensive organizational change across people, processes, and technology to promote the FinOps practice and ensure that cloud resource usage creates business value. Capabilities in this realm focus on efficient FinOps operations, organization-wide enablement, collaboration between roles and business functions, and more efficient cloud usage.

Explore the realm: Manage the FinOps practice

Realm capabilities