FinOps X 2023 Recap

Held against the backdrop of sunny San Diego, FinOps X 2023, which took place June 27-30th, wasn’t just a fantastic event with hundreds of FinOps practitioners sharing their knowledge. It was more than great weather, food and fun. It was a wonderful way to meet professionals from around the world and compare notes on how to improve FinOps practices.

Attendees learned more about the upcoming billing framework FOCUS (FinOps Open Cost & Usage Specification), delivered by Mike Fuller and Udam Dewaraja from the FinOps Foundation. FOCUS aims to make billing easier for customers to allocate cloud costs to their businesses. The complexities of today’s cloud services can create headaches around billing. For instance, AWS alone has hundreds of services and potentially thousands of SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit). Cloud service providers each have their own data formats and terminologies, reflected differently in detailed bills. While this framework is in its infancy, as cloud service providers begin to adopt FOCUS, it will become easier for FinOps teams to drive value through the Cloud. How exciting that Azure and GCP are interested in developing this framework to improve their billing data exports!

When talking to various FinOps professionals, one couldn’t help but notice the great variety of approaches. Intuit, UKG, Equifax, Disney and other organizations shared what works for them in driving value through FinOps processes. Nationwide, Fidelity and others covered great ways to keep accountability across teams utilizing the cloud, and how to track performance. Some of my favorite conference topics included:

“Advanced Approach to Prepay Amortization and Rate Blending”
– Jason Rhoades, Intuit

“Build vs. Buy: Why UKG Chose to Build its own Cloud Cost Management Solution”
– Peter Crenshaw, UKG

“Capturing the Value of Cost Allocation”
– Brian Chukwu-Smith, Equifax

“Is it a Savings or a Spend Reduction?”
– Alee Whitman, Disney

“Scorecards: Cloud Optimization Index (COIN) Score and How Nationwide Uses It”
– Julia Harvey & Audrea Ratliff, Nationwide

“Fidelity Leadership Explore Container KPIs”
– Geoff Langfield & Veera Kishore Goduguluri , Fidelity

If you would like to watch these sessions as they become available, just check out the FinOps Foundation’s YouTube Channel.

The conference culminated with a fun awards ceremony on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Midway. What a great end to an awesome conference.

As we mentioned at our booth and during our vendor showcase, we are still offering organizations a free FinOps assessment. We’d love to help you identify your strengths and guide you with a roadmap to successfully improve your FinOps capabilities. Contact us today to schedule your free FinOps assessment.

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About the Author: Stewart Kasen

Stewart Kasen is a Senior Consultant at Rego Consulting. He is a Certified FinOps Practitioner and Certified Agile Scrum Master. Stewart began his career at Ford Motor Company where he guided teams in their journey from traditional IT delivery teams to Agile Product Teams. Stewart then worked at Apptio helping new customers and existing customers improve their FinOps capabilities.