It might not be anywhere near springtime yet, but it’s still the perfect time to plant seeds for your brand new (or redesigned, or fine-tuned …) cost management strategy for 2025.
To make sure your foundation is solid as you move forward, take advantage of these helpful resources for building and refining your FinOps practice:
- The re:Invent 2024 recap is a must-see if you’re an AWS cloud user.
- The next State of FinOps summit is open for sign-ups.
- Microsoft’s 2024 cost management recap summarizes all the cost management changes they implemented last year.
Think of brushing up on all this knowledge as the business version of hitting the gym for the new year. It’s time to get excited for the progress you’re about to make!
Top Cloud Cost News From December 2024
If you missed AWS re:Invent, you’ll want to check out the recaps
re:Invent 2024 took place in early December, and it was packed with product updates, announcements, and several interesting presentations from industry leaders.
If you missed out on the action, don’t worry. You can still catch up on all the latest AWS news and go into the new year well-prepared for the scheduled changes.
Here are the highlights:
You can also browse through this recap page to see all the details from the event in one place.
If you have any interest in the future of the AWS cloud experience — including but not limited to how your costs might change in 2025 and beyond — it’s worth diving into these resources. You’ll see CEO Matt Garman’s keynote speech, as well as several announcements regarding generative AI tools and AWS services that could impact your business.
February’s State of FinOps summit has officially been announced
Why not interrupt the humdrum monotony of February by attending the FinOps Foundation’s State of FinOps meeting on the 20th? It’s the perfect excuse to break up your routine and learn tons of helpful FinOps strategies and tips you can use to save your company money.
While the agenda hasn’t yet appeared online, you can sign up to secure your spot here.
Based on previous State of FinOps meetings, we expect you’ll be treated to a day of in-depth learning about FinOps trends across various industries, complete with insights that should help you hone your own FinOps practice and make your cloud spending more efficient.
Microsoft also dropped a 2024 recap that will catch you up on Azure cost management updates
Microsoft mentioned several times over the course of the past year that improving cost efficiency and transparency is a top goal. To give credit where it is due, the company did release several updates that could positively impact your margins — if you take advantage of the new features.
This 2024 cost management recap will walk you through the changes Microsoft implemented within its Azure cloud service under the categories of cost visibility, allocation, optimization, and sustainability.
Give it a read to make sure you’re using their up-to-date cost management strategies. We’re sure these new tools will come in handy as we inevitably dive deeper into generative AI and similar technologies next year, and in years to come.
Deep Visibility Is Your Best Path Toward Achieving Total Cost Control
Staying up-to-date on what the major service providers are doing — and on the FinOps industry as a whole — is crucial to understanding how and why to optimize your costs.
However, all the background knowledge in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t have the tools to look at your own company’s cloud costs in fine detail.
We’ve said it dozens of times before, and we’ll say it again: Granular cost visibility allows you to find your unit economics, which are the key to managing your costs effectively.
Thankfully, getting to that level of visibility is simpler than you think with CloudZero. Once you onboard — with the assistance of one of our dedicated customer success specialists — you can begin diving into your cost data within the first 24 hours. From there, you can start making great progress toward your goals of FinOps maturity and effective cost management.
to see what CloudZero can do for you, or take a tour of the platform here.
The Cloud Cost Playbook
The step-by-step guide to cost maturity
