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    #31 Intro to FinOps (with Ajay Chankramath)

    Ash Patel

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    Episode 31 [SREpath Podcast]

    Show notes

    FinOps is on the tip of many tongues in the software space right now, as we try to curb our costs in all areas.

    Ajay Chankramath has had a head start on this topic, having given talks on FinOps at conferences like the DevOps Enterprise Summit (DOES) among others.

    He is the Head of Platform Engineering at ThoughtWorks North America, an innovator consulting group. His peers like Martin Fowler and Neal Ford have originated ideas like refactoring, microservices, and more.

    He shared practical advice for avoiding a harsh, restrictive cost control approach and instead taking a holistic financial view of your software operations.

    You can connect with Ajay via LinkedIn

    Key concepts we explored

    Our conversation touched on fascinating FinOps concepts like:

    1. FinOps is Collaboration for Business Growth. We talked about which other functions are critical to support software and engineering teams to optimize cloud usage for scalability and reinvestment in business growth.
    2. Balancing Cloud Cost with Business Value. We explored the need to differentiate between cloud cost reduction and FinOps, the latter focusing on optimizing cloud usage for business value rather than simply minimizing costs.
    3. Core Principles of FinOps: Ajay covered a few of the core FinOps principles such as clear ownership, collaboration, centralized governance, business value justification, accessible reporting, and variable cost models.
    4. Cultivating Cultural Transformation: We agreed that you need to have cultural transformation within the organization that changes mindsets and processes to align with FinOps principles and goals.
    Related article:  #26 – Growing as an SRE (Part 2)

    You will not want to miss Ajay’s insights that can impact your team and organization’s cost base.

    In Episode #31 of the SREpath podcast, Ajay Chankramath shares his wisdom on managing cloud costs [Spotify link]

    Ash Patel
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