Abstract
Organizations adopted public cloud services with intention to cut down on their on-premises spend and shift from a ‘CapEx’ to ‘OpEx’ model. However, post cloud adoption, they experienced cost overruns, leading them to explore options for optimization and reducing cloud spend. Typically, conversations around this revolved around a particular FinOps tool. However, from our perspective, cost optimization is not about a tool. It is a process and approach before and after implementation / moving to cloud. Typically, any organization approach starts their cloud journey by adopting infrastructure as a service (IAAS) cloud services, which mostly involved a lift and shift sort of migration from on-premises to cloud.
This paper examines how organizations can move beyond tool centric FinOps models to adopt a process and architecture led approach for sustainable cloud cost optimization.
Organizations cannot demand consistent 10-15% year-on-year savings from FinOps tools alone; It is just a source of governance and cost visibility.
Sustainable cost savings are achieved at the architecture and provisioning stages, not after workloads are deployed.
Significant cost savings can be achieved through re-evaluating cloud licensing and subscription models across platforms and vendors.
Kubernetes-native tools such as Kubercost, Karpenter, Kubegreen enable pod-level optimization, delivering meaningful and measurable cost efficiencies.