Key Criteria for Evaluating Financial Operations (FinOps) Toolsv1.0

An Evaluation Guide for Technology Decision Makers

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. Key Criteria for Evaluating FinOps (Cloud Financial Operations) Primer
  3. Report Methodology
  4. Decision Criteria Analysis
  5. Evaluation Metrics
  6. Key Criteria: Impact Analysis
  7. Analyst’s Take

1. Summary

The cloud has become the de facto hosting platform for enterprises, with multi-cloud and hybrid cloud infrastructures becoming the norm. However, managing cloud costs is a major challenge. Cloud financial operations (FinOps) is a method of bringing financial accountability to the OpEx spending model of cloud. It allows distributed IT teams, development, and finance to work together to enable faster product delivery while managing and predicting costs.

However, it is important to understand first that FinOps is different from the traditional IT procurement CapEx model, in which finance identifies and signs off on costs allocated by product teams. Instead, a cross-functional FinOps team pulls together technology, business, and finance to optimize cloud vendor management, service rates, and discounting.

More than a buzzword, FinOps is supported by a formal organization (FinOps.org) that ensures the industry delivers clear solutions and consistent definitions to the process of establishing financial accountability in cloud spending.

This GigaOm Key Criteria report details the key issues and trends to consider around the use of FinOps tools. We identify key criteria and evaluation metrics for selecting a FinOps platform, and, in the companion Radar report, recognize the vendors and products that excel. We also provide an overview of the key enabling technology that can be obtained today, which can help decision-makers evaluate existing platforms and decide where to invest.

This report covers various aspects of managing the cost of a multi-cloud deployment using FinOps tools. It includes guidance on how to plan, how to pick the right technologies, how FinOps works in multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments, and what processes and tools you’ll need to be successful the first time.

How to Read this Report

This GigaOm report is one of a series of documents that helps IT organizations assess competing solutions in the context of well-defined features and criteria. For a fuller understanding consider reviewing the following reports:

Key Criteria report: A detailed market sector analysis that assesses the impact that key product features and criteria have on top-line solution characteristics—such as scalability, performance, and TCO—that drive purchase decisions.

GigaOm Radar report: A forward-looking analysis that plots the relative value and progression of vendor solutions along multiple axes based on strategy and execution. The Radar report includes a breakdown of each vendor’s offering in the sector.

Solution Profile: An in-depth vendor analysis that builds on the framework developed in the Key Criteria and Radar reports to assess a company’s engagement within a technology sector. This analysis includes forward-looking guidance around both strategy and product.

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