Mastering and measuring FinOps on the cloud has become a critical capability for businesses that want
to optimize cloud operations and align them with strategic goals. But doing so is complex in practice—it
requires knowing the right FinOps metrics to monitor and having the expertise to report effectively.
Further, it requires having a strong team in place to remediate issues, capitalize on new opportunities,
and continually improve your cloud strategy.
In this guide, we’ll recap the FinOps fundamentals before taking a deep-dive into 7 essential FinOps
metrics you should measure to maximize ROI on your efforts. Then, we’ll explore how working with an
expert cloud services provider can help you do it all more effectively for faster goal achievement.
Quick Takeaways:
- FinOps aligns finance, operations, engineering, technology, and business teams to maximize
value from the cloud. - Core principles of FinOps are: collaboration, ownership, centralization, reporting, value, and cost.
- FinOps metrics like cloud spend efficiency, cost per user, cost per workload, and cost variance
inform more intentional cloud spending. - Metrics like instance right-sizing, application and network performance KPIs, and mean time to
repair (MTTR) drive greater cloud efficiency. - Cloud managed service providers have the experience and expertise to help you accelerate time
to value from your FinOps strategy.
A Quick Recap: The Fundamentals of FinOps
In our 1-2-3 Guide to FinOps in the Cloud, we covered why FinOps is becoming such an important part of
cloud strategy for the modern enterprise, plus actionable strategies for launching your FinOps journey.
Before we dive into FinOps metrics and measurement tips, let’s recap the important takeaways from that
original guide.
By definition, FinOps is a cloud management strategy designed to align finance, operations, engineering,
technology, and business teams to collaborate on maximizing business value from the cloud. It’s rooted in
six principles:
- Collaboration: FinOps teams must be diverse and multidisciplinary, with members collaborating
to remove silos and uncover opportunities to optimize cloud assets. - Ownership: Transparency and accountability are essential, with each stakeholder maintaining
full ownership of their cloud use and results as compared to planned goals and budgets. - Centralization: A company’s FinOps team should serve as a central resource for managing cloud
infrastructure, addressing issues, and supporting company-wide adoption. - Reporting: Frequent and data-driven reporting must be a priority to inform decisions, drive quick
remediation of issues, monitor progress toward goals, and identify new opportunities to
improve. - Value: The fundamental goal of FinOps is to deliver value however possible. FinOps teams must
focus on value delivery in every aspect of cloud operations and strategy. - Cost: FinOps teams continually look to drive cost-effectiveness through operational efficiencies,
pricing optimization, and vendor negotiations.
As we explore strategies for measuring FinOps success in the next section, these principles will serve as a
guide for understanding the metrics and strategies best aligned with FinOps objectives and most likely to
help your organization achieve its goals.
7 Key FinOps Metrics to Measure
1. Cloud Spend Efficiency
Cloud spend efficiency measures the overall cost-effectiveness of your organization’s cloud spending. It
involves comparing your ROI from cloud expenditures against the determined value it delivers. Analyzing
this metric can help you identify whether your cloud investments are yielding proportional benefits and
help you adjust your strategies to achieve balanced spending.
2. Cost Per Workload
Break down cloud spending by individual workloads, applications, or services. This granular view of costs
will help you understand which areas of your cloud infrastructure are consuming the most resources and
whether these expenses are justified by the workload's business value, guiding strategic adjustments for
cost optimization.
3. Instance Right-Sizing
Instance right-sizing involves assessing whether cloud resources, like VMs or storage, are appropriately
sized for their workloads. This is vital for ensuring that your resources are neither underutilized (leading
to waste) nor over-provisioned (leading to unnecessary costs). Regularly evaluating and right-sizing
instances can significantly enhance utilization efficiency.
4. Cloud Cost Per User
This metric calculates the cost of cloud services for each individual user at your organization. It helps to
analyze how user behaviors and requirements impact overall cloud costs, and can help you set standards
around how employees use the cloud. It can guide decisions on user training, access controls, and
resource allocation to ensure each user’s consumption is in line with your financial objectives and cloud
usage policies.
5. Application and Network Performance
Monitoring the performance of your applications and the network infrastructure within your cloud
environment is crucial. This metric assesses aspects such as application response times, network latency,
and throughput. Good application and network performance are indicative of an efficient cloud setup,
impacting user experience, operational productivity, and, ultimately, the business bottom line.
6. Cost Variance
Cost variance compares the actual cloud spending against the budgeted or forecasted amount. It’s a key
metric for effective financial management and control, helping you understand where you may be
overspending and where there are opportunities for optimization. Regular monitoring of cost variance
ensures cloud spending is always aligned with your larger financial planning and objectives.
7. Mean Time to Repair
Mean time to repair (MTTR) measures the average time taken to resolve issues or outages in the cloud
infrastructure. A lower MTTR is desirable, indicating efficient and effective issue resolution processes.
This metric is crucial for maintaining operational continuity and minimizing the impact of downtime on
business operations.
How Expert Service Providers Drive FinOps Success
Achieving your full potential on the cloud—and with FinOps—requires a certain level of expertise and
experience that most organizations are still developing. One of the best ways to accelerate and maximize
value from FinOps in the cloud is to work with an expert cloud managed services provider.
An expert service provider not only has extensive experience working in cloud environments, they have
diverse teams of experts who can guide your internal FinOps team effectively. At Protera, we’ve seen
firsthand how companies can reach new levels of FinOps achievement by partnering with our experts to
transform their FinOps strategies.
This success happens across industries and sectors, highlighting the efficacy and wide applicability of the
FinOps best practices Protera delivers:
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In the chemicals industry, one Protera client saw a 47% decrease in cloud spend in 8-months,
34% decrease in VMs, 10% decrease in total TB
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A manufacturing client earned $100K+ annual savings by implementing FinOps blueprint to
evaluate, redesign and optimize manual processes from the shop floor to the end customer
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In the Oil, Gas, and Energy sector, one client reached $50K monthly savings by moving non-prod
backups from globally redundant storage to locally redundant storage
These are just a few examples of how Protera works with clients to deliver customized FinOps solutions
aligned with unique business needs, goals, and capabilities. Protera’s comprehensive FinOps managed
services help enterprises inform, optimize, and successfully execute their cloud strategies to maximize
revenue and growth.
Talk to a Protera expert today to learn more about our FinOps managed services and how we can help
your organization transform.