3 Emerging Trends and The Key Takeaways From This Year's FinOps X
Last month, our Principal Consultant and FinOps lead Ethan Sumner, attended FinOps X in San Diego California hosted at the Marriott Marquis.
Hundreds of fellow practitioners attended the event to share their FinOps knowledge, collaborate in chalk talks, and network.
In this blog, Ethan showcases some of the highlights of the event in addition to some emerging trends we saw at the event.
3 Emerging Trends From FinOps X 2023
At FinOps X, it truly highlighted how fast the FinOps community is growing and also the pace of innovation within the community. Here are three emerging trends we saw:
1. Advancements in tooling
It was interesting to see the advancements made in native tooling from the cloud solution providers. Microsoft, Google and Oracle have made significant advancements in their native tooling, especially Microsoft's adoption of Copilot within Billing.
Another exciting area was the rise in demand for customisation or development of in-house tooling instead of out-of-the-box solutions—more advanced or run-stage organisations often selected this option. The adoption of the FOCUS specification will enable more standardisation across the industry when it comes to billing. You can learn more about the FOCUS Specification here.
2. Increasing Levels of Professional Development
At the start of Day 1, Stacey Casy (VP of professional development at the FinOps Foundation) shared an update regarding the future of training within the industry. Uptake in training has drastically increased, with more individuals becoming certified practitioners increasingly common and the recent update to include persona-based training has also been popular.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPMC), which won the FinOps team of the year, highlighted that they have over 200 professionally certified individuals within the organisation, showcasing just how vital training is within your FinOps journey.
3. Increase in Public Sector adoption
The Public Sector is a perfect example of how much impact FinOps can have. For certain government departments, complex procurement and billing processes have often increased costs and hurtled innovation. Adopting FinOps enabling increased levels of accountability, refinement of processes and resource efficiency and management have enabled public sector organisations to save money and improve processes. During FinOps X, a session led by Melvin Brown II and Al Himlar from the OPM highlighted the incredible work the government special interest group has achieved to advance the public sector. You can learn more about special interest groups here.
The State of DevOps in Financial Services
We reached out to IT professionals in financial services to gain a greater understanding of innovation and DevOps in their organization.
We received responses from 165 professionals, ranging from engineers to CTOs working at a range of financial services organizations from FinTech startups and investment funds to insurance firms and the biggest global banks.
Check out this White Paper to find out everything you need to know about the world of DevOps in financial services.
Highlights From FinOps X 2023
Over 1500 practitioners attended the event with keynote speeches, insightful break-out sessions and insightful talks. You can access the keynotes from days one and two on YouTube! So here are some of the highlights we’d recommend taking a look at:
- Introduction & Opening Remarks by J.R. Storment, Executive Director of the FinOps Foundation, highlighting all the incredible work done by the FinOps Foundation and the pace of innovation across the industry.
- Sustaining FinOps at Run Stage: Natalie Daleu, IT COO for Cloud at HSBC, showcasing how a mature FinOps organisation sustains and innovates within the industry.
- VPs of Cloud Billing Panel featuring Google Cloud, Microsoft and Oracle united, promoting how CSPs enable FinOps teams through native products.
- Introducing FOCUS by Udam Dewaraja, Chair of the FOCUS project at the FinOps Foundation, showcasing how much FOCUS will have on the industry.
- FinOps as a Product by Kim Wier & Rim Tatro from Target Corporation discussing how essential internal tools are within a FinOps transformation
- FinOps in Government Fireside Chat with Melvin Brown II & Al Himlar from the OPM (US Office of Personnel Management) promoting the incredible work the Special Interest Group has done to advance FinOps within the public sector.
- FinOps Education and the Future of Certification - Stacy Case, VP of Professional Development at the FinOps Foundation, showcases professional development's impact within the FinOps space and the upcoming changes to increase training towards different personas.
- Digital Transformation Meets Talent Transformation - Carol Richmond & Ebele Kemery from JP Morgan & Chase Co) further highlighting the need for FinOps training within organisations. JPMC has over 200 FinOps practitioners!
- Selecting a Tool (Chalk Talk) - Vas Markanastasakis & Rob Martin (FinOps Foundation) discuss how organisations select tools and which tools are needed depending on their journey.
In addition to the excellent sessions, there were plenty of activities going on, including the VMware After Party and the incredible awards ceremony hosted on the USS Midway (Yes, an actual aircraft carrier!)
Overall, the event was fantastic, and we highly recommend attending!
Interested in learning more about how Contino can help you on your FinOps Journey? Get in touch!
