FinOps Strategy: How to reduce AWS and Azure costs without losing power
FinOps strategy
It is the “Cloud Shock,” and it happens to 8 out of 10 companies. You were sold the idea that migrating to the cloud would be cheaper than maintaining your physical data center. At first, everything seemed fine. But one day, the CFO walks into your office with an AWS or Azure bill that triples the initial budget.
Is the cloud a scam? No.
Is the cloud expensive? Only if you use it like a physical server from the 90s.
The problem isn’t the platform; it’s the lack of governance. In this article, we break down why implementing a FinOps strategy is urgent and why true optimization isn’t just about turning off servers—it’s about re-architecting your money.
The “Lift & Shift” Mistake: Why You Are Bleeding Money
Most companies performed their migration under the Lift & Shift model: they took their local virtual machines and uploaded them “as is” to the cloud. This is the financial equivalent of checking into a luxury hotel and leaving every light and faucet running 24/7.
If your servers are running at 100% capacity waiting for traffic that only arrives during specific peaks, your FinOps strategy is non-existent, and you are wasting valuable budget.
What is FinOps? (Beyond Cutting Expenses)
FinOps (Financial Operations) isn’t simply “spending less.” It is the cultural practice where Engineering, Finance, and Business collaborate to make data-driven spending decisions.
A solid FinOps strategy answers:
- Who is spending what? (Cost allocation).
- Do we really need this capacity? (Usage vs. Waste).
- Can we get the same performance for less money? (Rate optimization).
Without a clear FinOps strategy, the cloud becomes a black hole of variable expenses that are impossible to predict.
The Koud Approach: Turning Off vs. Re-architecting
Here lies our unique insight. Many agencies will tell you that to reduce costs, you must “turn off development instances at night.” That is the basic level.
But at Koud.mx, we take your FinOps strategy to the deep level: Re-architecture.
- From Server to Serverless: Instead of paying for an idle EC2 server, we migrate functions to AWS Lambda or Azure Functions. You only pay for the milliseconds your code executes.
- Spot Instances: For non-critical processes, we use surplus cloud capacity with massive discounts.
- Real Auto-scaling: We configure your systems to “breathe” with your traffic. A good FinOps strategy ensures your infrastructure grows on Black Friday and shrinks on a Tuesday morning.
3 Steps to Start Your Financial Hygiene in the Cloud
1. Obsessive Tagging
You cannot optimize what you do not measure. The first pillar of any FinOps strategy is tagging. Every resource must have a tag: Project, Owner, Environment. This way, you’ll know if the spending is coming from “Marketing” or a forgotten testing environment.
2. Right-Sizing
Developers tend to over-provision “just in case.” An optimization analysis often reveals you are paying for giant CPUs operating at 5%. Adjusting size is vital for your FinOps strategy.
3. Savings Plans and Reservations
If you know you will use certain resources for a year, why pay the on-demand rate? Committing long-term (Reserved Instances) can drastically reduce your bill without touching a single line of code.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will applying a FinOps strategy make my application slower?
On the contrary. A well-executed FinOps strategy often improves performance. By re-architecting to use cloud-native services, you eliminate bottlenecks and latencies, paying less for a faster service.
How much can I really save?
It depends on your current state. In Koud audits, we have seen companies reduce their bill between 20% and 45% in the first 3 months by applying a professional FinOps strategy and eliminating “zombie” resources.
Do I need to hire a finance person for this?
Not necessarily, but you need a technical team that understands costs. Efficient code is cheap code, and that is the heart of the FinOps strategy.
Conclusion
The cloud should be an accelerator for your business, not a financial anchor. If your bill is growing faster than your revenue, you have an architecture problem.
Stopping the financial bleed is possible, but it requires the courage to leave traditional servers behind. It is time for your FinOps strategy to take control.
Does your AWS or Azure bill keep you up at night?
You don’t need to pay more to grow. Let the experts at Koud.mx perform a cost audit and define the FinOps strategy your company needs.
