About The FinOps Foundation

The FinOps Foundation is a project of the The Linux Foundation (alongside organizations like Cloud Native Computing Foundation) dedicated to advancing people who practice the discipline of cloud financial management through best practices, education, and standards. The FinOps Foundation is a 23,000+ person-strong community, representing more than 10,000+ companies.

The Foundation provides a variety of individual training and certification programs, including the FinOps Certified Practitioner and FinOps Certified Professional. Dozens of major service and platform providers have also become certified through our programs for organizations.

Mission of the FinOps Foundation:

Advancing the people who manage the value of cloud.

We are here to advance the people who do cloud financial management by:

• Creating Connections: Enriching connections wherever you are.
• Inspiring Growth: Career and skill advancement for whatever level you are.
• Empowering Best Practices: Being the definitive resource for all FinOps practices.

Special Project:

The FinOps Foundation supports the development of an open-source specification for cloud cost and usage billing data. This specification, called the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS™), reduces complexity for FinOps Practitioners and has been adopted by the largest cloud service providers.

FinOps Practitioners can learn how to get started with FOCUS data from each cloud.

How is the FinOps Foundation structured?

The FinOps Foundation includes a Governing Board and Technical Advisory Board, as well as a variety of committees such as education.

FAQs

Why are we a part of the Linux Foundation?

As part of the Linux Foundation (LF), FinOps has access to a large-scale open source non-profit engine. The LF has over 200 employees and large scale training, marketing, and events teams. Its work today extends far beyond Linux, fostering innovation in every layer of the software stack. The Linux Foundation hosts projects spanning enterprise IT, embedded systems, consumer electronics, cloud, networking, and more. A few of these high-velocity projects that are helping redefine what’s possible include Hyperledger for cross-industry blockchain technologies; Automotive Grade Linux, the open software platform for automotive applications; the Open Network Automation Platform project (ONAP) for real-time, policy-driven software automation of virtual network functions; and Kubernetes, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation project for production-grade container orchestration.

What does this mean for the cloud financial management space?

By increasing awareness and education of FinOps, the Foundation’s efforts will help to grow this space and the opportunities for everyone. The focus of our work is on the practitioner, educating and empowering them to make a difference in their organizations and in their own careers. Similar to previously nascent but burgeoning disciplines like DevOps, when you empower the individual, the entire ecosystem benefits. We are solving the challenges of cloud financial management together, as a community, and there are opportunities for all contributors to this space to participate and grow.

What was the former structure of the FinOps Foundation before joining Linux Foundation?

Prior to becoming a part of the Linux Foundation in June 2020, the FinOps Foundation (F2) was a standalone non-profit trade association seeking 501 C (6) designation from the IRS as a tax-exempt trade association. It had a board of directors and classes of members: practitioner members, charter members, consulting partners, and cloud service provider members.

What is the history of the FinOps Foundation?

The FinOps Foundation was born out of Cloudability’s quarterly Customer Advisory Board meetings where many cloud practitioners expressed the need for a community of practitioners to discuss best practices beyond vendor tooling. Very few people know how to implement FinOps in an organization, and there’s not yet a commonly agreed set of published principals. So, in February 2019, it helped to found the FinOps Foundation (F2) with assistance in assisting initial underwriting legal and administrative support. FinOps is now made up of thousands of independent industry experts from companies as diverse as Nationwide, Spotify, Nike, MIT, Atlassian, HERE Technologies, Australia Post, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Just Eat, Pearson, Sainsbury’s, Middle East Broadcasting Company, Tabcorp, Autodesk, Neustar, with dozens more joining each week. In June 2020, the FinOps Foundation merged with the Linux Foundation and closed its previous non-profit entity at the end of 2020.