Dive Brief:
- The FinOps Foundation onboarded American Express, Nvidia, AMD, ServiceNow and Snowflake Wednesday. The five companies joined the cloud cost management organization as premier members and will send representatives to the group’s FinOps X conference in June, according to the announcement.
- The Foundation expanded the scope of its IT cost-control efforts to include data center and software services spending as well as public cloud in March. The nonprofit trade group, which is part of the Linux Foundation, plans to release version 1.2 of FOCUS, its FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification framework, in June.
- The addition of chipmakers Nvidia and AMD to the FinOps Foundation’s ranks coincides with growing enterprise scrutiny of AI investments. “FinOps is now ubiquitous in the enterprise landscape for public cloud and FinOps teams are being asked by leadership to bring the benefits to other areas such as AI and SaaS,” J.R. Storment, executive director of the FinOps Foundation, said in the announcement.
Dive Insight:
Cloud modernization carried the unexpected sting of spiraling bills for many on the migration path. FinOps practitioners fought back, forging a cost-optimization alliance between finance and IT to rein in overspend and rationalize usage.
The FinOps Foundation brought technology service vendors together with cloud consumers to help standardize billing practices and ease cost management processes.
The new members join a robust roster of users and providers, including hyperscale giants AWS, Microsoft and Google cloud. The organization’s 51-member governing board includes technology executives from Capital One, JPMorgan Chase and Mastercard, as well as representatives from Accenture, PwC and SAP.
Snowflake is the first cloud-based data and AI platform provider to become a premier member of the FinOps Foundation, the organization said Wednesday. Rising costs associated with data storage and analytics have become a persistent pain point for enterprises as AI adoption spreads, according to a February Wasabi Technologies report.
The aim of FinOps is to curb unnecessary spending, which doesn’t necessarily equate with reduced cloud usage, Jay Litkey, SVP of cloud and FinOps at Flexera and a governing board member of the FinOps Foundation, told CIO Dive in April. Indeed, the practice often leads to increased cloud consumption, as stakeholders tie cost to value, he said.
The foundation’s newest members anticipate a similar trend to take hold in SaaS and AI usage.
“Establishing proper FinOps for AI has become critical for business success,” AJ Nish, senior manager for product and engineering at Nvidia, said in the announcement. “We're joining the FinOps Foundation as a premier member to help define industry standards, drive accountability through metrics and ensure customers maximize both performance and value from their AI infrastructure investments.”
