Why Every Cloud-Based Organization Should Have a Cloud Financial Administrator

It’s impossible to deny the increasing velocity of cloud adoption, but organizations that wish to maximize their cloud investment must consider adopting yet another new concept: the cloud financial administrator. Tech industry experts at 451 Research have culled the insights from leading enterprises operating in the cloud to support the case for this new role.

451 analyst William Fellows explains, “As enterprises look to adopt clouds across their entire organizations, it will be increasingly important to align procurement processes with the on-demand, variable consumption nature of cloud.” Of course, tools like CloudCheckr are useful to unify and govern cloud cost and expenses, security and compliance, inventory, and utilization—but the key to success is orchestrating that control across an organization, lest “companies risk receiving a bill they can’t afford.” Now Hiring: Cloud Financial Administrators notes that the role of a cloud “broker,” or financial admin, can help in several important ways:

1. Optimized cloud expense management and cost savings

Whether an organization uses one or several cloud providers for their compute, storage, and networking needs, it can be overwhelming to understand and assess the cost infrastructure of constantly-proliferating services. The cloud financial administrator, 451 explains, would maintain this knowledge, while determining ideal IaaS usage to optimize investment. “As the use of cloud rolls out across enterprises and charges begin to reach into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per year… Numerous enterprises have told 451 Research they expect the cost of salary for such a role would likely be quickly repaid in the savings achieved.”

2. Eliminating organizational speed bumps around cloud adoption

“[T]here is a fear that the reasons for waste in on-premises compute or colocation compute could actually be perpetuated in the cloud rather than alleviated because of a lack of oversight, utilization monitoring or reporting,” the report highlights. Having a cloud financial administrator to offer critical oversight, aggregate reporting insights, and manage complex cloud expenses can assuage the fears that are keeping many organizations away from more widespread cloud usage. Not only can they simplify the complicated world of public cloud pricing models—they can also make sense of multi-faceted SLAs to ensure organizational needs are met.

3. Increased innovation and organizational growth

While cloud service providers offer cost management tools, 451 notes that they are seeing “…operational and financial insight increasingly combined by firms that are reaching toward the broader cloud management opportunity rather than only focusing on cloud cost management.” The great cloud management tool race is explained by the constant pressure placed on organizations to demonstrate benefits to the CFO/CIO—both for recommending and remediating cloud service usage. The cloud financial administrator, in theory, would be the expert and owner of such tools to ensure aligned efforts across cloud initiatives.

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Every organization should identify cloud financial experts to make the most of their cloud investment. Learn more about building a FinOps practice in our on-demand webinar, Beyond Cost Management: Understanding Basic FinOps Concepts.