Relationship Between DevOps and FinOps and Azure Cost Management

In this episode of “FinOps on Azure,” Richard Fennell, a fellow Microsoft MVP and CTO at Black Marble, explores the relationship between DevOps, FinOps, and Azure Cost Management. Richard has a background in DevOps and is experienced in TFS and GitHub. The conversation revolves around the integration of FinOps into DevOps processes and how it can help optimize costs.

FinOps in DevOps

FinOps is a buzzword in the FinOps world and is often tied together with DevOps. It fills a gap in DevOps by keeping you honest and reminding you of what you’ve done wrong. It starts the conversation about how much something is going to cost and what can be done to optimize that cost.

Implementation of FinOps in DevOps

Implementing FinOps in DevOps often involves different people, including senior management. A champion for FinOps can help drive it forward and overcome barriers. FinOps can also be an opportunity for people in the DevOps world to raise their profile and be seen as caring about costs.

Cost as a Non-Functional Requirement

Cost should be considered as a non-functional requirement, just like performance and latency requirements. It is important to test your cost, just like performance, to ensure that it is within acceptable limits.

Roles and Decision Making

There is an opportunity for the FinOps person to be involved earlier in the life cycle to give a cost perspective during development and test. This can lead to cost optimization opportunities and a more efficient solution.

Estimation of Costs

It is important to compare the estimation of costs with what it costs in the real world and keep track of those differences. This can be done by looking at the metrics and making sensible iterations before going live.

Cost Optimization

Cost optimization can come from forgetting to do something, such as scaling something down, or from tweaking a skew to save cost on the overall. It is important to keep an eye on services as they change and make sure that they are still on the right skews and services.

Exciting New Technology

Richard is excited about moving more things into logic apps and function apps to get back to the core essence of the business requirement. He is also interested in seeing how AI tooling will be used in the FinOps space to make suggestions and close the loop.

Conclusion

FinOps and DevOps have similar objectives and can help each other out in an organization that does both well. It is important to consider cost as a non-functional requirement and test it just like performance.