Cloud cost glossary

FinOps

Also known as: Cloud financial management, Cloud cost management

FinOps is the practice of bringing financial accountability to variable cloud spending, so engineering, finance, and product teams make cost-aware decisions together.

FinOps (a portmanteau of Finance and DevOps) is an operating model for managing cloud cost as a shared responsibility rather than a bill finance reconciles after the fact. It pairs real-time cost visibility with the people who can act on it — the engineers provisioning resources.

A typical FinOps cycle runs in three phases: Inform (visibility, allocation, benchmarking), Optimize (rightsizing, commitment purchasing, waste removal), and Operate (governance, automation, continuous improvement).

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Part of the SpendArk cloud cost & FinOps glossary.