As cloud adoption rises, so does cloud “sticker shock.” That tremendous savings seen from the switch to up-front CapEx investments in information technology to subscription mode soon gets soured as the rising monthly bills come in for services nobody knows where and when they are being used.

If you feel your organization is behind the curve with automating even the most routine parts of cloud, and cloud spending is an unseen disaster waiting to happen, don’t feel so bad — even the most informed financial experts are still trying to figure these things out.

We’re talking about those who are part of a rising new discipline called “FinOps” — the practice of monitoring, measuring and mitigating the costs and value delivered from cloud. The perspectives of FinOps practitioners (yes, they are out there) provide a good look at understanding what lies ahead in cloud. Here, we see automation is still a struggle to fully attain, and cloud spending a big question mark.

These are the findings of the FinOps Foundation, a non-profit trade association focused on codifying and promoting cloud financial management best practices and standards, detailed in a recent survey of more than 800 FinOps practitioners from around the world with a collective $45 billion in annual cloud spend. “The dirty little secret of cloud spend is that the bill never really goes down,” says J.R. Storment, executive director of the FinOps Foundation.

The results show massive adoption of public cloud spend, and the struggle to contain and optimize cloud spend. Nearly half of survey respondents (49%) had little or no automation of managing cloud spend. Of those with some automation, almost one-third automated notifications (31%) and tagging hygiene (29%.) Only 13% automated rightsizing and 9% spot use. This “indicates that companies are likely missing opportunities to optimize cloud spend,” the survey’s authors note.

Half of compute spend on public cloud was for on-demand, the highest-price service; and 49% for reserved, savings or committed use coverage, the next-costliest option. Only 13% was for spot use, the least expensive service, even though respondents identified 28% as being an “excellent” target for that option.

Getting engineers to act on cost optimization was cited by 40% of respondents as the biggest challenge, followed by dealing with shared costs (33%) and accurate forecasting spend (26%.)

The most oft-used tools used for managing cloud costs include AWS Cost Explorer, Cloudability (Apptio), CloudHealth (VMWare), Azure Cost Management, GCP Cost Tools, and Cloudcheckr. About half, 46%, use cloud native tooling as their primary technology, 43% use a 3rd party platform, and 11% use home grown tools or spreadsheets. At the same time, many FinOps practitioners still rely on data collection, collation, and analysis via spreadsheet. Almost all practitioners use a combination of tooling, while still relying on spreadsheets for some tasks — with forecasting being the biggest Excel use.

The survey’s authors project that significant growth is ahead for FinOps, the field of cloud financial management, as more companies accelerate their cloud plans, especially amid COVID-19, and struggle to contain and optimize cloud spend. The survey respondents predicted an over 40% growth in FinOps team size in the next 12 months.

For the most part, FinOps is a part-time pursuit, and organizations need to buy into supporting efforts to monitor and manage cloud costs. Some challenges cited by respondents in the survey include the following:

Measuring real-time cost analysis between the various cloud providers.
Providing foundational education for engineering teams.
Having visualization of cloud architecture, versus cost of those parts of the infrastructure.
Facilitating robust tag enforcement, with easy ability to export cost and presentation to teams.
Enabling reporting total spend, cloud spend, service management spend and contract spend, the entire cloud spend picture.
Achieving container control, network and hardware integration at the scale and speed of cloud.”
Highlighting and fostering conversations around cloud cost management from a behavior change perspective.

2020 has been the year focused on the human. As the pandemic unfolded, the Humans of DevOps worldwide did their part to help mitigate the many challenges we faced. We are grateful to the tech community for their tireless efforts in helping individuals and organizations adapt to the new ways of working in different and non-traditional ways.

After a long year, DevOps Institute wants to honor our member community and partners by coming together like never before. We’re hosting a weeklong celebration 100% dedicated to advancing the Humans of DevOps, Dec. 7-11: Global SKILup Festival 2020!

The premier DevOps upskilling event and celebration is not your traditional conference. The agenda will include a variety of different activities that focus on social, professional and educational experiences. It also features a deep-dive into technology trends and presents career advancement opportunities. The world’s first such festival will take place virtually, and is sponsored by industry leaders Rancher, AppDynamics part of Cisco, CircleCI, Moogsoft, CloudHealth by VMware, Harness and Epsagon.

Want to Learn More About DevOps?
Whether you are well-versed in DevOps or just starting out, this premier DevOps upskilling event is for you. The festival runs continuously worldwide and includes a career fair, certification opportunities, courses, hackathons, our ever-popular Global SKILup Day conference and more! The 2020 event also features keynote speakers Mirco Hering, Global DevOps Practice Lead/ANZ Modern Engineering Practice (Managing Director) at Accenture, and Patrick Debois, Director of DevOps Relations at Snyk.

Workshops, Hackathons and Certifications
Many of our partners, sponsors, and DevOps Institute Ambassadors are running seminars, hackathons and certifications throughout the week. We recommend attendees start planning their schedule and save their spot by checking the agenda

SKILup Careers Fair
Network with HR and hiring representatives and discover DevOps career paths at leading organizations worldwide. Hear from the hiring leaders themselves which skill sets are most important. Explore emerging and available DevOps roles.

VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) today announced that global market research firm Forrester has named VMware a leader in both The Forrester Wave„¢: Cloud Cost Management and Optimization (CCMO), Q4 20201 and The Forrester Wave„¢: Hybrid Cloud Management, Q4 20202.

Were honored to be a leader in both of these Forrester Wave reports, said Ajay Singh, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Management Business Unit, VMware. We believe it reflects our dedication to helping customers unlock the full potential of a transformative, multi-cloud strategy. Wherever customers are on their multi-cloud journey, VMware delivers management solutions that help them address their needs.

Named a Leader in Cloud Cost Management and Optimization with CloudHealth by VMware

CloudHealth is a leader in the Forrester Cloud Cost Management and Optimization Wave and received the highest score in each of the three main categories of the eight evaluated vendors. The report analyzes and scores the top eight providers helping infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals select the right solution for their needs. For vendors with CCMO offerings, according to the Forrester report, Container support, accurate billing, and cost optimization are key differentiators. The Forrester report further states, [CloudHealth by] VMware offers a leading platform for cloud-native and traditional enterprises.

The report notes, Reference customers gave high marks for CloudHealths customer support and openness to adding new features. They also appreciated the teams quarterly business review, which provides benchmark comparisons with other customers of similar size and cloud spend ¦ CloudHealth also includes visibility support for VMware [Cloud] on AWS, Oracle (beta), and [VMware] vSphere and other VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP) clouds, in addition to AWS, Azure, and GCP.

The report adds: VMwares success in the enterprise data center makes the CloudHealth offering attractive for existing VMware customers and partners. Since VMware acquired CloudHealth Technologies in 2018, CloudHealth has expanded its channel and partnerships, grown its integrations to enterprise software, and has more than 10,000 customers, including some of the largest cloud consumers in the world.

A Hybrid Cloud Management Leader with VMware vRealize Cloud Management

Demand for hybrid cloud management solutions continues to grow rapidly. Organizations seek to work with vendors offering comprehensive solutions that deliver key functionality including end user consumption, automated provisioning, performance, capacity, cost, and compliance management as well as unified monitoring and troubleshooting. As stated in the report, The Forrester Wave„¢: Hybrid Cloud Management, Q4 2020, VMware offers a leading platform that extends management from private to public¦[VMware vRealize Suites] focus is on providing app-aware multicloud management. The Forrester evaluation also states, Also notable is its code and experience consistency between its classic on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based offerings.

VMware vRealize cloud management offerings help customers consistently deploy and operate applications, infrastructure and platform services across hybrid clouds so that they can modernize IT, accelerate cloud adoption and assure developer productivity. VMware vRealize includes automation, operations, log analytics and network monitoring capabilities to provide consistent operations and governance for a hybrid cloud environment.

The VMware vRealize Suite combines vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations, vRealize Log Insight, and vRealize Lifecycle Manager in a single package for on-premises deployments. VMware vRealize Cloud Universal combines SaaS and on-premises capabilities into one flexible subscription that enables customers cloud-first initiatives, with the flexibility to deploy vRealize cloud management on-premises or SaaS as needed.

VMware software powers the worlds complex digital infrastructure. The companys cloud, app modernization, networking, security, and digital workspace offerings help customers deliver any application on any cloud across any device. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is committed to being a force for good, from its breakthrough technology innovations to its global impact. For more information, please visit