FinOps shows no signs of stopping its momentum! The State of FinOps by FinOps Foundation was just released and contains valuable insights into where FinOps stands, key industry trends, and how FinOps will evolve in the coming years.
What are some of the most important takeaways in the State of FinOps report?
The top priority for FinOps practitioners this year is workload optimization and waste reduction, with over 50% of organizations focusing on reducing costs while keeping the value they provide to customers the same. The second priority indicated by respondents was full allocation of cloud spending, followed by accurate forecasting of spend.
However, just because organizations are focused on workload optimization now, does not mean they expect to keep it that way for long. In the next 12 months, FinOps governance and policy at scale is expected to overtake workload optimization as a top priority. The FinOps Foundation estimates this has to do with the maturity of optimization practices and the need for ingrained governance policies to continue to mature.
Another boon for FinOps is that most practitioners are investing in improving and enhancing capabilities or maintaining the same efforts, and only decreasing energy applied to capabilities in very few areas. With more FinOps teams taking on the spend of different areas of technology, including a large increase in those managing SaaS and licensing, it shows that FinOps principles are being used across different scopes.
One metric that has not moved much in sustainability reporting, resulting in only a 1% change since the previous year. There was an 18% increase in the organizations reporting cloud carbon in Europe and North America remained flat YoY. As it stands, only 3% of the respondents use carbon considerations to make optimizations.
Responding to the AI boom
It comes as no surprise that most organizations are investing in AI, however, the areas they choose differ. For example, over 75% of respondents will invest in public cloud offerings, 69% in SaaS, and the remaining split between data centers and private cloud. The financial services industry is investing more overall and in data center and private cloud offers compared to respondents in other industries.
Read the full report here, and learn how organizations are continuing to drive cost optimization.
The growing adoption of FinOps
If you are unfamiliar with it, FinOps means cloud financial management and, “…is a cultural practice and operational framework that empowers teams to take control of their cloud usage and costs to drive data-driven decisions, foster greater financial accountability, and ultimately maximize business value.” It is an incredibly powerful framework that many organizations are adopting to drive innovation and value-driven decisions. As you can see from the State of FinOps report above, FinOps represents an evolving discipline with numerous benefits and applications beyond just optimizing for cloud costs.
Edge computing shifts data processing closer to the data source, reducing latency and enabling real-time applications. This is crucial for IoT, autonomous vehicles, AR/VR, and cloud gaming. The combination of edge computing and 5G unlocks new possibilities for speed and responsiveness.
Edge computing also enhances security by minimizing data transmission to the cloud. The edge computing market is experiencing explosive growth, driven by the demand for real-time analytics and automation. Many organizations are turning their focus to this cloud trend.
Take a deeper dive into the FinOps world by exploring some of Ceiba’s blogs, written in collaboration with in-house FinOps experts. In, An Introduction to FinOps, we provide a comprehensive guide on what FinOps is and why it’s important. The FinOps Maturity Model article will walk you through the assessment process to develop a benchmark for your organization. And, finally, FinOps Principles will give you a great overview of the underlying principles behind FinOps and how to leverage them in your transformation.
At Ceiba, we view FinOps as more than just a cloud financial management practice it’s a cultural and strategic shift. The latest State of FinOps report highlights the growing need for cross-functional collaboration between business, IT, and finance teams, working together under shared KPIs and accountability. As FinOps governance matures, organizations are increasingly connecting cloud spending optimization with sustainability, data transparency, and long-term business agility. We’re here to help you evolve your FinOps practice, no matter where you are on your FinOps maturity model journey. Let’s build the bridge between technology, finance, and innovation together.
