DigiTalks: The power of synergy in FinOps – combining automation with expert cloud engineering for smarter cloud savings
What happens when FinOps tools, automation, and engineering expertise finally work together?
In this episode, we explore how real synergy between finance, engineering, and leadership turns cloud cost visibility into meaningful decisions. The invited industry experts cover the limits of tooling alone, the role of business context, and why shared ownership is critical to mature FinOps practices.
Adam Gaca: Hello everyone and welcome to Digitalks. Today our focus is on FinOps and how combining automation with expert cloud engineering can lead to smarter cloud savings. I am joined by Larry Advey (Cloud Zero), Frank Contrepois (Independent FinOps expert), and Daniel Kuźba (Future Processing). To start, companies are investing in FinOps tools, yet cloud costs continue to spiral. Larry, what is the real reason this happens?
Larry Advey: Costs keep rising because the number of customer accounts and the business keep growing. Without business context, you cannot understand if this is good growth or bad growth. Tying costs to unit economics—the “widgets” the company produces—is very beneficial but often lacking.
Frank Contrepois: The cloud industry is designed so you need one person to buy and ten to stop buying. Even with tools, you must convince people to resize or turn things off. Paradoxically, good FinOps reduces business risk, which can lead to increased consumption.
Daniel Kuźba: Fast growth leads to expensive shortcuts. FinOps delivers value because it works holistically between different teams, including IT, finance, and product.
Adam Gaca: From an engineering perspective, where is the disconnection between insights and action?
Frank Contrepois: There is a disconnection with executives, who should set strategic “barriers” for developers based on company strategy. Additionally, “shifting left” can cause cognitive overload for engineers who are overwhelmed by having too many “Ops” responsibilities.
Daniel Kuźba: We need specialists across product, engineering, and finance who all understand FinOps. This is a joint effort; we win or lose together.
Larry Advey: FinOps should be a part of the product development lifecycle. It helps determine if spending is worth it by measuring customer traction and revenue. Cost should be treated as a non-functional requirement, balanced against reliability and performance.
Adam Gaca: Why do organizations struggle to make proper actions even when they see the data?
Daniel Kuźba: It comes down to data quality, trust, and accessibility. It is hard to get value if you do not apply consistent practices across different cloud environments.
Larry Advey: Successful practices iterate on data allocation with engineering. If you bridge the gap with engineering and product to deliver data in their context, you can drive efficiency.
Frank Contrepois: We often throw too much data at people without context. You need to convert the data to match the person viewing it. A good graph needs five things: the data, text context, what “good” looks like, what “bad” looks like, and an explanation of why.
Adam Gaca: Where does automation deliver the biggest impact, and where is a human needed?
Larry Advey: Automation is fantastic but can still make mistakes. It is best to automate low-risk, non-production areas first. Production can be hard to automate because companies are rigid about reliability and risk.
Daniel Kuźba: Optimize before you automate. Without maturity, automation just creates “garbage faster”. Start with low-hanging fruits, celebrate success, and repeat.
Frank Contrepois: Humans are needed when the problem is not purely technical. Production automation should only be done if there is an extremely fast way to roll back. We should officialize and give credit for the scripts engineers are already using.
Adam Gaca: What are the risks of relying too heavily on tools without experts?
Frank Contrepois: Tools are built on assumptions that might not fit every company. In the cloud, consequences compound at scale; one VM issue is small, but 20,000 is different.
Larry Advey: Without experts, you risk unintended consequences. You need governance and guardrails around automation to build trust and showcase outcomes to the business.
Daniel Kuźba: Trust is built through capability, consistency, and commitment. Organizations should “fail fast and fail safe” through small experiments.
Adam Gaca: What are the top three blockers to taking action?
Larry Advey: 1. Lack of business context. 2. Lack of trust in data. 3. Lack of usage information (like hourly data) to understand seasonality.
Daniel Kuźba: 1. Context. 2. Trust. 3. Sponsorship and empowerment from leadership.
Frank Contrepois: Engineer fatigue and lack of rewards. Tasks must be in the backlog to exist; FinOps should be a joint responsibility rewarded at the same level as new features.
Adam Gaca: What does good collaboration look like in mature organisations?
Daniel Kuźba: It involves self-organizing teams from finance, engineering, and product meeting frequently to align with business strategy.
Frank Contrepois: It requires humility and learning each other’s “foreign language”. FinOps people must influence others by putting themselves in their shoes.
Larry Advey: FinOps is the “collaborator in chief”. While finance often uses the “stick,” FinOps should lead with the “carrot” (positivity). Success comes from identifying allies and champions to scale word of mouth.
Adam Gaca: What do successful organizations do differently with their savings?
Frank Contrepois: They are clear about what constitutes true savings versus recovering a blown budget. The team that saves the money should have a say in where it goes.
Daniel Kuźba: Mature FinOps is about “making money” rather than just “saving money”.
Larry Advey: It is about “engineering profit”. Real savings can be returned to the OpEx budget for travel or hiring, or used to reduce the “cost to serve” customers, providing a competitive advantage.
Adam Gaca: Final reflections on combining automation, expertise, and a reinvestment mindset?
Larry Advey: It leads to alignment, transparency, and trust, allowing businesses to innovate faster.
Daniel Kuźba: It allows us to focus on more interesting work.
Frank Contrepois: It moves the organization from tactical to strategic. When finance, engineering, and IT work together, it creates a beautiful synergy.
Adam Gaca: FinOps increases operational margin and trust, helping speed up reinvestment in growth. Thank you for tuning in.