Smarter cloud spending starts with FinOps

Cloud and hybrid IT environments promise flexibility, scalability, and innovation—but without financial oversight, they can also lead to spiraling costs. Enter FinOps: a rapidly evolving discipline that empowers technology leaders to take control of cloud spend and align financial accountability across IT, finance, and business teams.

In our FlexTalk webinar, Flexential Cloud and Managed Services Specialist Sean Kurutz sat down with Paolo Sellari, Sr. Product Manager, Cloud at Tangoe, to break down how FinOps frameworks can transform cost management from a reactive struggle into a strategic advantage. Here’s what every IT decision-maker should know.

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What is FinOps—and why now?

FinOps (short for Financial Operations) is more than a cost-cutting tactic. It’s a collaborative practice that brings finance, engineering, and product teams together to create shared accountability for cloud costs.

As Paolo Sellari emphasized during the session, FinOps isn’t about saying “no” to innovation—it’s about giving teams the visibility and control they need to make smarter decisions. With contributions from major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, the FinOps Foundation is helping set global standards for cloud cost data and governance.

“FinOps is really about collaboration and bringing teams together. It’s the discipline of cloud financial management that maximizes business value.”

—Sean Kurutz, Cloud and Managed Services Specialist, Flexential

With major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud backing the FinOps Foundation, the framework is quickly becoming the industry standard for cost management.

For organizations navigating complex hybrid IT ecosystems, the shift toward FinOps is both timely and essential.

The three pillars of FinOps success

Whether you're just getting started or looking to refine your approach, successful FinOps strategies hinge on three key pillars:

Visibility

It all starts with understanding where your money is going. Many organizations lack clear insight into cloud spend due to decentralized accounts, multiple providers, and inconsistent tagging. The first step? Automate data collection and enrich it with financial and business context. Automated, enriched cloud usage data helps you understand where your budget is going.

“Visibility is the first step,” said Sellari. “Once we automate data collection and apply financial rules, organizations get clarity across teams, projects, and departments.”

—Sean Kurutz, Cloud and Managed Services Specialist, Flexential

With Tangoe tools and Flexential cloud engineering expertise, organizations can unify their cloud usage data into customized dashboards—making it easy to track expenses by team, project, or business unit.

Optimization

With visibility comes the ability to eliminate waste and right-size your environment. Once you can see your spend, it’s time to act. FinOps helps eliminate waste by:

• Identifying unused or underutilized resources
• Leveraging reserved instances and savings plans
• Right-sizing workloads across IaaS, SaaS, and UCaaS platforms
• Upgrading to cost-effective instance types
• Optimizing containerized and hybrid deployments

Establishing cost policies, alerts, and accountability frameworks ensures sustainability.

“We help customers evaluate unused instances, implement savings plans, and even upgrade to newer, more cost-effective options—all while maintaining performance.”

—Sean Kurutz, Cloud and Managed Services Specialist, Flexential

We want to help customers reduce the waste of how they're architected, what they've deployed and what their long term cost structures are. So if they're incurring high increasing storage fees in unused environments or development environments that should have been turned off, we help identify those and say, OK, here's areas you can improve.

Governance

FinOps isn’t a one-time exercise. Sustainable cost control requires ongoing governance, including:

• Budget policies
• Alerts and anomaly detection
• Role-based accountability
• Continuous optimization and reporting

Governance ensures that cost optimization isn’t tied to a single champion or initiative—it becomes embedded in your culture. Establishing cost policies, alerts, and accountability frameworks ensures sustainability.

“It’s not enough to optimize once—you need processes that prevent cost sprawl as you scale.”

—Sean Kurutz, Cloud Specialist, Flexential 

Real-world results with FinOps in action

Flexential and Tangoe shared compelling examples during the webinar:

• A SaaS customer saved 30% in six months by optimizing license usage and right-sizing underutilized environments.
• A nonprofit implemented a customized exception-handling dashboard, cutting invoice processing time from weeks to five minutes.
• One enterprise reduced cloud spend by 25% in 90 days after combining a security assessment with FinOps-led optimization.

These aren't isolated wins—they reflect what’s possible when FinOps principles are applied with the right tools, talent, and partnerships.

“Getting sticky with customers is the goal,” said Sellari. “Because once they see what’s possible with visibility and expert support, they want to keep building.” 

Where FinOps is headed next

FinOps is evolving—and fast. Here’s where the experts say it’s heading:

• Professional services & staff augmentation will be critical as organizations seek expert guidance without expanding headcount.
• "Everything-as-a-Service" optimization (beyond just IaaS) is becoming central to cost strategy.
• Unit economics will shape how businesses define success—cost per transaction, cost per customer, etc.
• AI and automation will play a growing role in rate validation, forecasting, and anomaly detection.

In short, FinOps is becoming the operating system for cloud finance.

“AI is already impacting infrastructure planning,” Kurutz said. “FinOps helps ensure your cost strategy evolves with it.” 

Take the first step—without the complexity

FinOps may sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. FinOps isn’t just about cutting costs—it’s about creating a culture of accountability, enabling smarter decisions, and aligning your cloud spend with business outcomes. With the right FinOps strategy, technology leaders can break down silos, align teams, and ensure every dollar spent on cloud delivers real value.

“The best part of our partnership is that we meet customers exactly where they are in their journey.”

—Sean Kurutz, Cloud and Managed Services Specialist, Flexential

Ready to take the next step? FinOps makes smarter cloud spending possible—without the complexity.

Smarter cloud. Smarter spending. That’s the FinOps advantage.

Watch the full webinar to learn more!