Last month the FinOps Foundation (F2) announced their intention to join the Linux Foundation. Not only does this give the FinOps Foundation an opportunity to scale with one of the largest and most prestigious open source foundations, this move allows F2 to be organizationally neutral with an open governance model that will truly democratize the voice of FinOps practitioners.
What is the FinOps Foundation?
In case you haven’t heard of the FinOps Foundation, here’s what you need to know. The foundation defines FinOps as the following:
“FinOps ensures you get the most value out of every dollar spent in the cloud. FinOps enables a shift — a combination of systems, best practices and culture—to increase an organization’s ability to understand cloud costs and make business tradeoffs. In the same way that DevOps revolutionized development by breaking down silos and increasing agility, FinOps increases the business value of cloud by bringing together technology, business and finance professionals with a new set of processes.”
The mission of the FinOps Foundation is to:
- Provide a central community for cloud financial management (through virtual events, meetups, and Slack)
- Advance the careers of FinOps practitioners through career development, training, and certification
- Define cloud financial management standards through open source collaboration
VMware joins the FinOps Foundation as a Premier Member
With the transition to the Linux Foundation and the renewed governance model, our customers urged us to join the FinOps Foundation. Today, I’m pleased and honored to announce that VMware is joining the FinOps Foundation as a Premier member. A representative from CloudHealth will join the new Technical Advisory Council and Governance Board to help advance the practice of cloud financial management (CFM).
Over the past several months, we’ve discussed some of the ways we think FinOps should evolve, as FinOps aligns closely with a core pillar of the Cloud Center of Excellence: Cloud Financial Management. We’ve spent significant time researching and publishing best practices around this concept, and we are excited to have a seat at the table to contribute our experience and research, and partner with the community to learn more.
The CloudHealth team is excited to join the FinOps Foundation and help shape the best practices and management standards for cloud financial management today and in the future.
Cloud financial management has never been more critical than it is right now. Organizations around the world are accelerating their cloud strategies while at the same time trying to control costs in a turbulent economic environment.
The FinOps Foundation is doing important work to advance cloud financial management practices and practitioners. We’re excited to learn from FinOps Foundation members and contribute best practices we’ve gathered through our partnership with more than 10,000 organizations worldwide.
VP and CTO of CloudHealth by VMware
What’s next for VMware and the FinOps Foundation?
Why did we join the FinOps Foundation? We’re here for two primary reasons:
- Contribute to the Foundation. With Deb MacCallum, VP of Engineering for CloudHealth, and John McLoughlin, Sr. Director of Product Management at CloudHealth joining the governance board and technical advisory councils respectively, we’re excited to participate and help shape the ongoing conversations around cloud financial management best practices and standards. In addition, the CloudHealth team is exploring more ways we can contribute to the community via best practices, research and analysis, and templates we’ve developed.
- Engage with the community. The FinOps Foundation has over 1,700 of the brightest minds in cloud financial management. We want to learn from this incredible brain trust and we’re excited to be a part of what’s coming next for CFM. This will help shape our roadmap and strategy as well as our thought leadership content.
If you aren’t already a member of the FinOps Foundation, consider joining today! Practitioners can join at no cost. If you’re already a member, we look forward to continuing the conversation in Slack and at future meetups.
