Good morning, everyone. My name is Hari Aramshetty. I'm a software engineer at Flexport. I'm thrilled to hear today as we dive into mastering cloud cost efficiency, strategic optimization for cloud native success. In today's session, we'll explore not only the traditional cost optimization methods, but also how to leverage FinApps principles to drive smarter financial management in the cloud. Whether you're a developer, Operations expert or financial professional. There's something in here for you. So let's get started So here's a quick overview of what we will cover today We'll set a stage by discussing why cost efficiency is critical in today's cloud environments. We'll examine the key pain points in managing the cloud expenses and how FinOps provides a framework to address these challenges. I'll walk you through the actionable strategies from resource rightsizing to budget forecasting that will blend the traditional techniques with FinOps best practices. We'll discuss design considerations that ensure your applications are both scalable and cost efficient. I'll share real examples where FinOps practices led significant savings and improved governance. We'll conclude with a step by step roadmap to implement these strategies within your organization. Optimizing cloud costs is more than just cutting expense. It's about driving better return on investment and fueling innovation. When we control our spend effectively, we free up resources to invest in new technologies and business opportunities. FinOps fosters a culture of collaboration, Where finance, operations, and engineering regularly share insights, set joint cost targets, and adjust resource allocation strategies in unison. For example, when unexpected costs spikes occur, the engineering team works alongside the finance to understand and rectify the issue, while operations implements automated policies to prevent recurrence. This unified approach not only streamlines cost management, but also drives smarter decision making across the organization, ensuring that every team, is both informed and accountable for their cloud spending. With continuous monitoring and real time analytics, FinOps enables us to predict and manage expenses more accurately. Organizations that master cloud cost efficiency can reinvest their savings into growth initiatives leading to stronger market position. Essentially, by adopting FinOps, you are not just saving money, you are setting the stage for sustainable innovation. Managing cloud costs comes with a lot of challenges. Cloud providers offer many pricing choices like pay as you go, reserved plans, and spot pricing. which can make it hard to know exactly what you will pay for. Each option has its own benefits and drawbacks, making it a challenge to pick the best one. This complexity often means businesses must keep a close eye on their usage to avoid unexpected bills. Often companies buy more computing power or storage than they really need, which means money on unused resources. On the flip side, if they don't use the resources they have, It's actually wasting money. This balance is key to managing the cloud cost efficiently. Without proper process in place, each team might set up its own cloud resources without talking to others. This can lead to a lot of duplicated work, wasted money and missed chances to share and optimize resources. In short, a lack of coordination often results in inefficiencies across a company. Without proper visibility, it's hard to know exactly where your money is going. This is where FinOps makes a difference. It promotes a culture of shared responsibility, encourages regular cross functional reviews, ensuring that every team understands and manages their part of the cloud space. Next, we will look at strategic cost optimization framework. Our framework for cost optimization is built on four key pillars, each enhanced by FinOps principles. Start by checking how much you spend on cloud services, And how you use them. This gives you a clear starting point and shows where you can make changes right away Using data to help you see spending patterns and set goals for incremental improvement Start by matching your cloud resources to your actual needs a practice We call right sizing and consider reserved capacity for workloads that run steadily You can go for RA shopping with your cloud account This helps ensure that you aren't paying for more than you need. Also use Phenom's practices to regularly review your spending and adjust your budget based on how much you actually use. First, set clear policies for managing cloud costs and use tools to automatically track spending. Like tagging. These tags help you to see which engineering organization or project is using each resource. Then form teams from different departments to take shared responsibility, keep track of spending and make sure the process is followed. Continually track spending with dashboards and analytical tools. Use FinOps reporting to proactively manage costs and adjust strategies in real time. This cyclic approach of Optimize, govern and monitor is critical to achieve sustainable cost efficiency in the cloud. Next, we will take a look at cloud native best practices for cost efficiency and finops. When it comes to cloud native design, building cost efficiency into your architecture from the start is the key. Here's how. Adopt microservices and containerization. These technologies allow you to build modular, and scalable applications that can dynamically adjust to demand. Using microservices means breaking your application into smaller independent parts that work together. Each part can be updated or scaled on its own, making the system more flexible. The containerization packages are These parts into easy to move units. So your application can quickly adjust to the changes in demand. Another way we can do this is leveraging serverless architectures. Serverless computing means you don't pay for the running servers all the time. Instead, you only pay when your code is running or handling a request. This approach helps you save money by eliminating costs for unused idle capacity. Another strategy that we can use is implementing auto scaling. This enables your system to automatically scale resources based on demand, a process that should FinOps metrics. Moreover, Integrating FinOps in your design process means designing for cost transparency from the start. This means every team member from the developers to the financial analysts can see how design decisions impact the bottom line, try for more informed cost effective decisions. So let's take a look at key cost optimization and FinOps strategies. Let's dive into some of the practical strategies that blend it. Traditional cost optimization with FinOps best practices. Resource site sizing. So used detailed usage data for FinOps dashboards to understand your current resource utilization. So that CPU or memory for your containers or EC2 machines and see how much is an ideal time and how much is the usage time. So adjust your resource allocations dynamically based on real time demand to avoid over provisioning. You can also take a look at reserved or spot instances based on the workload types. Reserved instances. Reserved instances are ideal for predictable, steady workloads. They offer a significant cost savings by committing to a long term usage. That means, for example, you have a Kafka cluster, which you need always running. You use reserved instances for that type of workloads. There are spot instances. that are great for transient or flexible workloads, allowing you to capitalize on lower cost during the off peak times. This can be used for lower priority schedule jobs that we run in a distributed system. The other thing that we can do is automated governance. Tagging is a key part of automated governance. Implement tagging and cost allocation policies to monitor and control spend. Leverage automation tools to enforce these policies consistently. for in AWS, you can take a look at as service control policies, SCPs. Let's take a look at tools and technologies. For cloud cost and FinOps management. There is a robust ecosystem of tools designed to help you manage cloud costs and implement FinOps practices. Tools like AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, GCP Cost Insights offer clear dashboards that show all your cloud spending. They break down your costs. By different categories such as service region or team. This makes it easier to see where your money is going and find ways to save tools like cloud custodian and terraform help automate the management of your cloud class by Using code to set up rules and controls With infrastructure as code, you can manage resources and policies automatically without the need of minor intervention. This ensures that cost saving measures are always in place and consistently followed. This means that you can set rules for how your resources are used and have those rules automatically enforced. Using these tools makes it easier to manage costs and reduce mistakes. Advanced analytics and machine learning help you predict your future cost. They can also spot unusual spending from early on. This gives you time to fix the problems before they grow. FinOps tools like Cloud Health and AppTO give you detailed insights into your cloud spending. They help teams from different engineering orgs work together on managing costs. Using these tools creates a strong unified system to keep your cloud spending optimized and at all the time. Now let's look at two real world examples that illustrate the power of FinOps. In one case, we have a product team that was consistently overspending due to overprovision compute resources. They had three instances of like overprovision VMs, which were like each application was using less than CPU. And they had a database server, which was vertically scaled. Much more than they ever needed. So what did this team do? So they implemented right sizing and established a regular FinOps reviews, ensuring that their team was accountable for their resource usage. What was the outcome of this? this proactive approach resulted in 30 percent reduction in cost and a significant improvement in resource efficiency. So let me take you on another case study where there was a business unit that had budget constraints due to unmanaged resource drop, with various teams deploying resources independently. By centralizing governance, enforcing strict tagging policies, and holding cross functional financial reviews, they improved visibility into their spending. What was the outcome of this? The BU not only achieved significant cost savings, but also established a sustainable model for continuous cost management. These examples underscore how integrating FinOps practices can transform your cloud spending from reactive to proactive process. Now let's take a look at building a road map to cloud cost optimization with FinOps. So building a roadmap is essential for long term success in cloud cost optimization. Here are some of the steps that you need to do in order to get this working. First, assessment. So begin by auditing your current cloud spend. Use FinOps tools to establish baselines and immediately identify immediate areas for cost savings. Planning. Define clear cost goals and key performance indicators. This is also the time to form your cross functional FinOps teams, bringing together FinOps, operations, and engineering. The next is implementation phase, where roll out the cost optimization strategies and FinOps practices. We have discussed today. Focus on automating governance, right sizing resources and leveraging reserved and spot instances. Last and not the least, monitoring and iteration. So using dashboards and regular FinOps reviews to monitor progress and iterate. Adjust your strategies based on real time data and evolving business needs. Ensure that your cost optimization plan aligns with your overall business objectives. Secure executive sponsorship to help drive the culture shift necessary for a successful FinOps implementation. This roadmap is designed to be iterative and adaptable, ensuring that your business cloud cost management practices remain effective as your business grows. Drawing from industry experiences and my own journey, here are some of the best practices and lessons learned from a FinOx perspective. Integrate early. So incorporate cost considerations at the design phase of your projects. to avoid expensive reworks later. Continuously monitor resource usage and adjust allocations based on FinOps insights. Ensure that every team understands the financial impact of their decisions through training and shared dashboards. Avoid one size fits all. Everyone has their own needs. Each team is different from a different team. Some teams have different requirements. In compute than other teams. So tailor your Fino strategies to the specific needs and usage patterns of each team. Leverage automation. Automation reduces manual errors and ensures consistency in policy enforcement. By embedding these practices into your operational culture, you create a dynamic environment where cost efficiency is part of the DNA of your organization. all for your time and engagement today. I hope you found these insights into cloud cost efficiency and FinOps both informative and actionable. If you'd like to continue this conversation or have further questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. Have a wonderful day and thank you again.