Top-Down FinOps is Not Enough: The Future of FinOps Starts in Your Applications

In this episode, host Michael Stephenson sits down with Ben DeBow, Founder and CEO of Fortified, to discuss how FinOps is evolving beyond cloud cost reporting and into application-level optimization. Ben shares insights from years of helping enterprises manage cloud spend at scale, explaining why traditional FinOps practices often stop at visibility while the biggest savings opportunities remain hidden inside applications, workloads, and engineering decisions.

Together, they explore the next generation of FinOps, where cloud costs are treated as an engineering problem as much as a financial one. The conversation covers application budgets, developer accountability, workload optimization, and why organizations need to connect cloud spending directly to business value.

You can listen to the other episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Episode Highlights

00:00:00 – Introduction

00:03:12 – Why Traditional FinOps Isn’t Enough

00:06:45 – Hidden Cloud Costs Inside Applications

00:09:20 – The Million-Dollar Dashboard Story

00:12:18 – Beyond Cost Allocation and Reporting

00:15:07 – Engineering Ownership of Cloud Costs

00:18:54 – Application-Level Budgets

00:22:11 – Cost vs Business Value

00:25:36 – Cost-Aware Software Development

00:29:05 – The Future of FinOps

00:32:14 – Building a Cost-Conscious Culture

00:35:20 – Closing Thoughts

Key Takeaways from the Episode

• FinOps Must Move Beyond Cost Visibility – Most organizations have become better at tracking and allocating cloud costs. However, visibility alone doesn’t reduce spending. Ben explains that mature FinOps programs must focus on understanding what drives costs and how engineering decisions impact cloud consumption.
• The Biggest Savings Are Often Found in Applications – After infrastructure optimization opportunities are exhausted, the next wave of savings comes from analyzing application behavior, database usage, queries, and workload design. In many cases, a small code change can deliver greater savings than large infrastructure initiatives.
• Engineering Teams Are Central to FinOps Success – Cloud costs are heavily influenced by architecture and development choices. Organizations that embed cost awareness into engineering processes are better positioned to control spend while maintaining innovation.
• Application Budgets Are the Next Evolution – Just as organizations set performance and security requirements, cloud cost expectations should be established at the application and service level. This creates accountability and enables proactive cost management.
• Focus on Value, Not Just Cost Reduction – Reducing cloud spend is important, but optimizing purely for cost can create unintended consequences. Successful FinOps teams evaluate spending against business outcomes and measure value alongside efficiency.

Enjoyed This Conversation?

Don’t miss other episodes of the FinOps on Azure Podcast, where we speak with practitioners, consultants, and cloud leaders about real-world cost management challenges, lessons learned, and what actually works in practice.

Subscribe for upcoming episodes and if this episode resonated with you, feel free to share it with your team.

Explore More FinOps Resources

Watch Webinars

Learn directly from FinOps practitioners and Azure experts in our Webinar Library.

Explore Case Studies

See how organizations and MSPs manage Azure costs at scale: Customer Stories.

Browse Resources

Access our full Resource Library – blogs, guides, videos, and best practices.