In today’s economic times, the criticality of cost efficiency is at an all-time high. Organizations need high-quality guidance backed by products and services that help you achieve and maintain that efficiency. This is a large part of what we do today within the Cost Management team and the larger Commerce organization here at Microsoft. In that vein, we are excited to announce that Microsoft has joined the FinOps Foundation as a premier member and has joined the Governing Board defining the strategy and vision of the organization. Together, we can deliver unparalleled guidance and innovative solutions that empower organizations to increase efficiency and accelerate growth.

“I’m very enthusiastic about our partnership with the FinOps Foundation and our membership as part of the FinOps community. Optimizing cloud workloads is more important than ever for companies of all sizes in all industries. For Microsoft this collaboration with the FinOps Foundation and our industry partners will empower Microsoft Cloud customers and partners to leverage the cost management best practices and industry-standard operating procedures cultivated by the FinOps community.” —Vivek Dalvi, Corporate Vice President, Commerce Platform and Experiences

What is the FinOps Foundation?

The FinOps Foundation is a non-profit organization hosted at the Linux Foundation dedicated to advancing people who practice the discipline of cloud financial management via best practices, education, and standards. The FinOps Foundation community is made up of practitioners around the world, including many of our valued Microsoft Cloud customers and partners. The FinOps Foundation hosts working groups and special interest groups covering topics like cost and usage data standardization, containers and Kubernetes, and sustainability based on real-world stories and expertise from the community.

“Microsoft is a bellwether technology leader who is aligned to our vision of accelerating the growth of FinOps practitioners with its presence, leadership, and innovation. We welcome Microsoft as a Premier Member as its membership will be a huge asset to the larger FinOps community and development and maturation of best practices across industries and the world.” —JR Storment, Executive Director of the FinOps Foundation.

Microsoft and the FinOps Foundation

My colleague, Jimin Li, joined the Foundation Governing Board in January and we’ve already begun participating in working groups and special interest groups, but that’s just the beginning. As we look toward our future as part of the FinOps Foundation, we’re exploring five primary focus areas over the coming months:

Defining specifications and evolving best practices

We are excited to join the FinOps Foundation and our industry partners in defining, evangelizing, and implementing best practices and specifications like the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS). We’re already actively contributing to this program and looking forward to sharing our joint developments broadly.

Aligning our collective guidance

We offer a wealth of guidance from architecture documentation, like Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework and Azure Well-Architected Framework, to our products, like Microsoft Cost Management and Azure Advisor. While we tell the same underlying story as the FinOps Foundation, we believe the closer our guidance is aligned to the FinOps Framework, the easier it will be for individuals and organizations to understand and implement. As a first step, I’ve contributed to the second edition of the O’Reilly Cloud FinOps book.

Improving our products and services

Similar to how we plan to align our guidance, we see opportunities to align our products and services to the FinOps Framework while learning more about customer needs from the vibrant multicloud community of practitioners in the FinOps Foundation forums. We view this as an end-to-end experience for people and organizations to adopt and for many, that can sometimes start and end with the product itself. We aim to be good citizens in the community by contributing and listening.

Advancing training and certification programs

The FinOps Foundation offers several great training and certification programs, such as the FinOps Certified Practitioner and FinOps Certified Professional, geared towards helping people advance within their careers and growing the community at large. We look forward to working with the FinOps Foundation to improve material specifically focused on the Microsoft Cloud and to certify relevant Microsoft teams in FinOps.

 

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Fun fact: Microsoft has the largest number of FinOps Certified Professionals at any organization in the world!

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Engaging with the community

I’ve mentioned the FinOps Foundation community several times now, but I’m not sure I’ve really done it justice. With over 8,700 members and growing rapidly, the community behind the FinOps Foundation is truly the driving force of the success of the organization. We are extremely enthusiastic about this opportunity to collaborate with and learn from this passionate community as we engage in various programs and initiatives, like the upcoming FinOps X conference where Microsoft is a platinum sponsor. The more we learn, the better we can support you and help you achieve more.

What’s next?

We’re looking forward to the many exciting opportunities ahead of us as we partner with FinOps Foundation, seeking to make cost management and optimization—or “FinOps”—easier to adopt and implement within the Microsoft Cloud. We only scratched the surface here, so stay tuned by following Cost Management updates over the coming months.

To learn more about FinOps Foundation and to participate in the community, please join us at finops.org or in person at FinOps X in June.