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FinOps Foundation Insights

Will AI and LLMs Transform FinOps?

Date: May 20, 2024 Video: 6 minutes

Key Insight: Microsoft discovered that FinOps is the key to cloud success after a lift and shift approach left savings on the table. AI and LLMs have the potential to transform an organization’s approach to migration and modernization, and towards a cost-aware architecture.


Managing the cloud bill is a shared responsibility among cloud providers, customers, and partners. Microsoft must deliver the right data and tooling to manage costs, and customers must understand best practices around cloud usage. Partners can help facilitate optimal usage.

Fred believes that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) have the power to transform the FinOps space by empowering FinOps Practitioners to answer deeper and broader questions, particularly around migration and the best way to build modern applications in the cloud with cost-awareness built in from the get-go.

Take advice from Microsoft’s experience: They started their move to the cloud with excitement about saving money. They lifted and shifted workloads to VMs and found that costs were about the same as on premises. Microsoft started to realize that driving new behaviors within engineering, and establishing collaboration between engineering and business teams, would be critical to realize their hope of reduced cost and increased innovation in the cloud.

Microsoft is investing in FinOps along four pillars:

  1. Analysis – billing & invoicing capabilities
  2. Insights – cost management capabilities
  3. Optimization – smart recommendations
  4. What-if simulations – forecasting, and using natural language to ask questions
Topics
  • Executive Stories
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