Companies have been making such large investments in the cloud over the past few years that a strong ROI has become a necessity. According to Gartner industry research, global business spending on cloud services is expected to reach $591.8 billion by the end of 2023, which represents a 21% increase in just one year. To consolidate, optimize, and streamline cloud ecosystems, companies are turning to a best-practices framework known as FinOps (financial operations), which calls on IT, DevOps, and finance teams to come together and collaboratively identify ways to increase the ROI of cloud investments. FinOps is designed specifically to eliminate bloat, inefficiency, and redundancy.
Unfortunately, many organizations lack a clear understanding of how to design and implement FinOps. They leave money on the table and don’t obtain the optimized cloud operations that they’re seeking. To fully realize the promise and potential of FinOps, a company should not be relying solely on an in-house team to implement the framework. FinOps transformations are best achieved in partnership with a managed service provider (MSP) that specializes in them.
Not only do these third-party experts have the experience and perspective necessary to customize and adapt the FinOps framework to meet the organization where it’s at, but MSPs can also anticipate and work around roadblocks and other challenges that tend to derail inexperienced in-house teams. Let’s explore three invaluable ways a managed service partner can help organizations get more out of their FinOps transformations.
Transform the Customer Experience
Every organization wants its cloud ecosystem to operate efficiently for maximum benefit of its customers. While many engineering teams lack the time, tools, and breadth of knowledge required for FinOps implementation, a Managed Services partner can realize cost savings faster and bring a broad wealth of tangible ideas and a proven track record for successful implementation.
Depending on the industry and opportunity, a managed service provider will recommend innovative ideas like injecting AI and machine learning into customer-facing interactions, offering the same services across a wider range of channels, and reducing the length of time to complete customer workflows in ways that the organization doesn’t even realize are possible. Across all of these changes, the MSP will prioritize reducing friction, providing enhanced personalization, and expanding options.
Gain Confidence in Security and Compliance
Whenever an organization is proposing to streamline and reduce the costs of its cloud infrastructure, a lingering question always remains: At what cost? Organizations don’t want to put themselves at increased risks of security and compliance vulnerabilities. An in-house FinOps team won’t always have the knowledge and perspective necessary to weigh costs vs. benefits. Moreover, they won’t know how to respond to internal critics who allege that security and compliance will be put at risk through FinOps-fueled consolidation—criticism that can ultimately derail the consolidation initiative itself.
A managed service provider will bring an authoritative, experienced voice into the mix—a voice that can deftly give the company the confidence it needs to move forward with FinOps consolidation while simultaneously ensuring security and compliance.
Enable Rapid and Responsible Migration to the Cloud
Often, a key component of a FinOps-led cost-savings strategy is to make additional investments in the cloud. The reason is simple: By more comprehensively transitioning an organization’s operations from on-premises solutions into the cloud, the organization becomes poised to achieve greater economies of scale with its cloud investments. But this next-level FinOps cloud migration is not always feasible to achieve. At times, an in-house FinOps team won’t see a path forward. That’s because the migration of some systems to the cloud—particularly complex systems that are subjected to regulatory oversight and/or routine auditing, such as the banking and healthcare industry—don’t have the luxury of a test-and-adjust phase.
Indeed, many of the systems that have not already been migrated tend to remain on-premises because of the complexity and difficulty of cloud migration. An MSP is expertly positioned to tackle even these big, consequential migrations—and to do so in a rapid, responsible way. For example, AWS’s Outposts offering is designed to be run on-premises or at edge locations, even as it mimics the infrastructure, APIs, and other tools of the AWS public cloud. The result is an organization that can achieve its vision of migrating its operations wholly and seamlessly to the cloud—with no need to compromise.
Companies need a way to impose cost controls and greater efficiencies on their cloud operations. FinOps is the best-practices way to achieve these outcomes without taking it on alone. A managed service provider plays an essential role in guiding the organization’s in-house team toward optimal outcomes, including leading a transformation of the customer experience, giving the organization full confidence in its ability to meet all security and compliance obligations, and enabling the organization to migrate rapidly and responsibly to the cloud.
