Logging Strategies in the FinOps Context

The Role of Logging in FinOps Monitoring

In cloud environments, costs do not arise randomly but are the result of concrete architectural decisions and operational processes. This is where FinOps comes in, combining financial governance with operational transparency. The goal is to ensure that business units, IT, and finance can make cloud spending decisions based on a shared set of data.

A core requirement for this transparency is proper monitoring. It provides the signals needed to assess cost development, system stability, and user experience. Modern monitoring systems work primarily with three types of data: logs, metrics, and traces. This article focuses on logging because log data offers essential insights into application behavior while also becoming a significant cost driver in monitoring platforms.

Platform Engineering: The Foundation for shifting FinOps left

Platform Engineering: The Foundation for shifting FinOps left

FinOps is currently practiced in most organizations as a downstream control mechanism to manage capacity reservations or respond to cost anomalies. Proactive measures typically intervene at the software architecture level. Platform Engineering creates an ideal starting point for integrating FinOps instrumentation and governance tools across the entire software landscape through the centralization and standardization of workflows.

What’s Behind Platform Engineering

Platform Engineering is a discipline that centralizes existing knowledge and standards around software development processes within organizations and makes them visible and accessible to all teams via self-service. Goals include reducing cognitive load for development teams so they can focus on business logic, as well as accelerating the development of new features by minimizing undifferentiated heavy lifting within the organization.

The FinOps Journey

When Do Companies Typically Start their FinOps Journey?

Companies often begin to focus on cloud cost management only when problems become unmanageable. Common triggers for addressing cloud costs include:

• Scaling or rolling out solutions that lead to unexpected cost increases.
• Rapid growth of the cloud landscape resulting in complexity.
• Incidents demanding greater transparency.

In most cases, the FinOps journey begins with an assessment and a cloud cost optimization project. Sometimes, these projects lead to the implementation of a FinOps governance organization. However, many companies revert to old habits and encounter the same issues later.

Understanding FinOps: A Comprehensive Guide

What is FinOps?

FinOps, short for Financial Operations, is an operational framework and cultural practice designed to maximize business value by managing cloud costs. It facilitates real-time decision-making through the collaboration of engineering, finance, and business teams. FinOps enables organizations to understand their cloud costs, optimize spending, and operate efficiently.

Overview Video

Here is a very comprehesive overview Video for getting stared with FinOps by the FinOps Foundation.

codecentric - FinOps Governance Model Implementation

FinOps Governance and Cloud Economy Optimization

Challenge

The project targeted the assessment and enhancement of cloud economy and FinOps at a prominent Media House. The focus was on scrutinizing Google Cloud expenses and establishing robust cloud governance.

Strategy and Action

Our forwardnow team has augmented the codecentric Team thorough review process, integrating professionalized cloud governance tools and techniques. This involved:

Our forwardnow team has augmented the codecentric Team’s thorough review process by integrating professionalized cloud governance tools and techniques. This involved: