The FinOps Evolution: How Leading Teams Are Modernizing Cloud Cost Management

In 2024, FinOps officially went mainstream. IDC reports that 75% of Forbes Global 2000 companies have adopted some form of Financial Operations, or FinOps, to manage their cloud environments. But even as more organizations embrace the practice, one misconception still dominates: FinOps is only about saving money.

Cost savings are part of the equation, but they're not the whole story. At its core, FinOps is a strategic approach to managing cloud costs. It gives organizations clear visibility into cloud usage, enforces governance and policy at scale, and supports digital transformation by improving agility, accountability, and operational efficiency.

The scope of FinOps is expanding. According to the FinOps Foundation, 63% of teams now use FinOps practices to manage AI-related cloud spend-up from just 31% the year before. These principles are also being extended beyond public cloud to cover SaaS, licensing, and private cloud environments.

Success in FinOps isn't just about buying the right tool. It's about people, processes, and cross-functional collaboration. That's why FinOps maturity should be treated as an ongoing journey that builds lasting capability, not just one-off wins.

What Companies Often Miss About FinOps

Many companies start with the assumption that they just need a tool. While tools are important, they can't deliver value in isolation. Without the right processes, executive support, and skilled people to interpret data and take action, the best tools in the world will fall short.

True FinOps success requires a cross-functional team. IT and finance are critical players, but leadership buy-in is just as important. Executive sponsorship ensures FinOps is treated as a strategic priority, with resources allocated for staffing or managed services that can bridge capability gaps. Without it, even well-intentioned initiatives can stall.

Understanding the FinOps Maturity Curve

One of the most effective ways to align teams is through the FinOps Maturity Curve, a framework that measures where an organization stands today and where it can go next. Presidio uses a "crawl, walk, run" model to help organizations benchmark their capabilities.

Here are a few questions from that process:

1. Can you accurately forecast your cloud spend six months out?
2. Do you have cost allocation tags applied consistently across your cloud environment?
3. Can you tie cloud spending back to specific business outcomes or products?

If the answers to most of these questions are "no," your organization is likely in the crawl phase of the Maturity Curve, which means you're managing costs reactively and with limited visibility. The goal is to move toward the run phase, where spending is predictable, optimization is continuous, and cost data is tied directly to unit economics (for example, the cost to produce a single product).

The Core Capabilities that Drive FinOps Success

At Presidio, our approach builds on the FinOps Foundation framework, focusing on eight capabilities that deliver the greatest impact. These capabilities can be understood as summarized within three main themes:

1. Foundational Visibility

Visibility is the foundation of effective FinOps. Without accurate, timely data, it's impossible to make informed decisions. Yet according to Flexera's 2024 State of the Cloud Report, almost a third of cloud spend is wasted

To strengthen cloud cost management and decision-making:

• Standardize tagging to ensure consistent cost attribution across teams and services.
• Implement reporting tools that surface actionable insights and track usage trends.
• Enable access to spend data for decision-makers across finance, IT, and operations.

Strengthening data access and clarity lays the groundwork for deeper optimization-where real savings and strategic gains begin.

2. Optimization Enablers

Optimization is about more than finding unused resources. It means analyzing unit economics and cost per transaction to uncover deeper efficiencies.

Key actions to drive meaningful optimization include:

• Analyze unit economics to understand cost per product, transaction, or service.
• Identify and eliminate waste such as idle resources or over-provisioned systems.
• Establish regular review cycles to make optimization a repeatable habit.
• Encourage collaboration between finance, IT, and operations to align goals and surface opportunities.

Together, these actions help companies turn inefficiencies into operational gains. In fact, organizations using managed FinOps services report 20-30% lower operational costs.

3. Governance and Scalability

Consistency ensures savings and efficiencies last. That's why governance processes are essential for applying FinOps practices across the organization. Governance in FinOps means creating clear policies, accountability structures, and repeatable processes that ensure cost management is applied consistently across teams, platforms, and business units.

As organizations scale, maintaining that consistency becomes more complex. That's where outsourcing comes in. IDC reports that 92% of G2000 companies outsource at least part of their IT functions-including FinOps-to scale effectively and uphold governance standards. Managed services can help fill capability gaps, enforce policy adherence, and ensure that FinOps practices remain consistent even as cloud environments grow more complex.

Key actions to strengthen governance and scalability:

• Define ownership models for cloud spend across business units.
• Establish policy frameworks for tagging, budgeting, and forecasting.
• Automate compliance checks to ensure standards are followed at scale.
• Leverage managed services to maintain consistency and extend FinOps capabilities.

Accurate forecasting plays a central role in all three capability areas. Building forecasts requires cross-team collaboration, historical usage analysis, and a willingness to adjust. By budgeting with flexibility and managing committed cloud spend carefully, companies reduce risk and improve their financial posture.

Taking FinOps from Idea to Outcome

Our philosophy is tool-agnostic. That means we help customers integrate with native cloud tools or connect them with best-in-class third-party vendors, whichever best fits their environment. This flexibility gives clients control over their FinOps journey instead of locking them into a single platform.

Our managed services bridge the gap between insight and action. Having the right data is important, but so is having the people and processes to turn that data into results.

Curious what that looks like in practice?

We partnered with DraftKings to support their FinOps journey during a period of rapid growth. As they scaled their customer base, our managed services helped facilitate a large-scale platform migration while enabling internal teams to stay focused on strategic, customer-facing work. Using PRISM Cloud Financial Managed Service, DraftKings achieved a 25% reduction in cloud costs, improved visibility into spend, and enhanced anomaly detection. These improvements also enabled focus on scalability and performance, critical for maintaining seamless user experiences during high-traffic events.

The Future of FinOps in an AI-Driven World

AI is reshaping every corner of technology. FinOps is no exception. The principles of FinOps still apply in an AI world. The framework, best practices, and governance models remain relevant, even if the tools evolve.

Here's where AI adds value to FinOps:

• Accelerates decision-making by surfacing insights faster.
• Improves forecasting accuracy through pattern recognition and predictive modeling.
• Frees up teams to focus on strategic work by automating routine analysis.

We're actively investing in AI capabilities, including exploring agentic AI interfaces that allow users to ask natural-language questions like, "What will my cloud spend look like next quarter?" This kind of self-service insight can make FinOps more accessible to stakeholders across the organization.

FinOps isn't just an operational discipline. It's a cornerstone of cloud transformation and a critical enabler of digital agility. Organizations that treat it as a one-time cost-cutting exercise miss the bigger opportunity: building the processes, skills, and governance needed to make cloud investments deliver ongoing value.

Want to know where your organization stands on the FinOps Maturity Curve? Contact us to schedule your free FinOps maturity assessment and start moving toward lasting cloud efficiency.

FinOps FAQs:

Q: How is FinOps different from traditional cloud cost management?

A: FinOps emphasizes cross-functional collaboration, real-time visibility, and continuous optimization-not just cost tracking.

Q: What's the FinOps Maturity Curve?

A: It's a framework that helps organizations benchmark their capabilities and progress from reactive cost management to strategic optimization.

Q: How does AI enhance FinOps?

A: AI enables predictive forecasting, anomaly detection, and self-service insights that make FinOps more scalable and accessible.