This blog takes about 20 minutes to read, as the author includes extensive hands-on experience which is highly valuable and worth keeping for referenc

FinOps in Startup: How We Cut Cloud Costs by 80% in Two Years Without a Dedicated Team

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2024-09-24 11:30:04

This blog takes about 20 minutes to read, as the author includes extensive hands-on experience which is highly valuable and worth keeping for reference. The hands-on experience section is marked with “TL;NR” and feel free to skip this section.

The startup company mentioned in the title is our company, ApeCloud. Over the past two years, we have reduced cloud costs by more than 80% by leveraging FinOps tools, processes, and strategies.

Unlike larger enterprises, we didn’t allocate a dedicated team to a so-called “cost reduction campaign”, nor did they invest heavily in FinOps products or hire professional cost optimization vendors. Instead, we adopted an internal approach, forming a SIG (special interest group) from their development team to collaboratively build and iteratively optimize their FinOps processes. Throughout the journey, our primary goal was to minimize any disruption to development efficiency.

FinOps (Financial Operations) is a cloud financial management practice aimed at helping businesses optimize their cloud spending while improving business agility and innovation. As cloud services become universal, companies are facing increasing cloud costs. FinOps helps manage and optimize these expenses through cross-departmental collaboration between finance, tech, and business teams.