Want to Gain Control of Your Cloud Costs? Give Engineering More Ownership

By Bill Buckley, CloudZero

Cloud adoption continues to grow, which means spending is up — especially given the expansion of AI and generative AI (GenAI) initiatives, which consume a significant amount of cloud resources.

Organizations are spending a lot, but more importantly, they're finding themselves in the dark when it comes to that spending. Where it is allocated and whether they are spending on the right things are just two of the lingering questions.

One way to flip the script is to give engineering more ownership of cloud costs. A new report from CloudZero found that 81% of respondents said their cloud costs were around where they should be when engineering has some level of ownership. Let's explore why that is and how to enable this ownership.

Examining the Status Quo

Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services reached $563 billion in 2023, and it's not slowing down. Cloud costs are typically hard to predict, control, and afford; 58% of respondents to CloudZero's survey said their cloud costs are too high. This is largely because organizations don't know where their spending is going; only 42% of respondents said they could estimate how much of their cloud spend goes to various parts of their business (such as products, features, and customers). Twenty percent reported having little to no idea what they spend on those various business elements.

Related:7 Cloud Finance Metrics to Track to Better Control Cloud Costs

This is becoming a company-wide concern. A lack of visibility isn't just harming organizations financially; it's also limiting productivity. Businesses want to manage their cloud costs and become more efficient, but it's often easier said than done.

Engineering, Take the Wheel

The lack of cloud cost visibility significantly impacts the engineering function; 66% of engineers say a lack of visibility into cloud costs causes some level of disruption to their work.

It's the goal of good engineering teams to align their efforts with business results. The fact that organizations can't connect cloud costs to business outcomes suggests a massive breakdown in cloud software engineering.

There's a direct correlation between engineering ownership and better business outcomes — and that means engineering needs to take a bigger role when it comes to cloud cost ownership. Need proof that engineering ownership helps? Eighty-one percent of respondents said their cloud costs are about where they should be when engineering has some level of ownership. In addition, 68% can accurately align costs to business metrics at more than double the rate when engineers take ownership of costs.

Related:Will Hybrid Cloud Save You Money? Predict Your Hybrid Cloud Costs

Aligning for Success

A successful FinOps practice depends on interdisciplinary alignment: Engineering, infrastructure, and finance teams need a shared understanding of what constitutes cloud efficiency, and a shared language for strategizing about it. In practice, this means a single source of truth for all cloud, PaaS, and SaaS cost data and a common set of metrics by which to measure success.

These actions lay the foundation for additional best practices that organizations need to incorporate:

Shifting Responsibility for Cloud Cost Savings

When it comes to the cloud, there's a direct correlation between engineering ownership and better business outcomes. As AI and GenAI initiatives proliferate, cloud costs will rise, making it all the more important to manage cloud expenses. Because these expenses are usually hard to predict and control, the majority of companies say they're spending too much.

But it doesn't have to continue this way. The research demonstrates that good things happen when engineers own at least some cloud cost management role. Use the information and best practices above to give engineers greater ownership over cloud expenses, and watch the savings roll in.

About the author:

Bill Buckley is senior vice president of engineering at CloudZero.