FinOps in Action

Welcome to FinOps in Action! Join host, Taylor Houck, Each week, as he sits down with FinOps experts to explore the toughest challenges between FinOps and Engineering. This show is brought to you by PointFive - empowering teams to optimize cloud costs with deep detection and remediation tools that drive action.

FinOps in Action is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 82 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts FinOps in Action, a business show with 82 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #80

  The Cloud Bill Nobody Was Watching ft. Michael Graff | Ep #80

  Aug 6, 202642 min

  This week's episode of FinOps in Action takes a different shape, with PointFive Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer Gal Ben-David stepping in to host a conversation with Mike Graff, Infrastructure Architecture Director at Dolby Laboratories and a FinOps Ambassador. Mike shares a couple of real cost inefficiencies he's tracked down in the wild, then the conversation opens up into bigger questions about where FinOps is headed from new roles emerging on the engineering side to how AI might change the way teams find and fix waste. It's a grounded, practitioner led episode for anyone trying to close the gap between what engineering builds and what finance sees on the bill. Here’s what we talked about: Small misconfigurations can hide big costs. A couple of the "craziest" inefficiencies Mike's found weren't exotic, they were simple settings almost anyone could miss, and easy to fix once spotted. Platform tools don't always keep pace with the cloud. Vendors can lag behind what cloud providers already support, and Mike argues teams shouldn't just accept those gaps. Cost optimization and security fight the same uphill battle. Both compete for engineering attention against feature deadlines and both benefit from getting into the conversation earlier. The FinOps role may be split in two. Mike and Gal dig into whether cost efficiency is becoming its own engineering discipline, separate from the finance side of FinOps. You don't need a title to start. Many practitioners begin as a side project, start small, find one win, and let momentum build. Chapters: 00:00 Vendor Security Rant 00:15 Special Episode Setup 01:25 Meet Mike Graff 02:18 Databricks Egress Surprise 05:14 Finding It in Dashboards 06:06 NAT Gateway Routing Trap 08:11 Tooling Gaps and Visibility 10:21 PaaS Transparency and Governance 13:56 Shifting Left With Engineers 22:10 Performance vs Cost Wins 23:30 Gamifying FinOps Scores 24:23 Unit Economics Challenges 25:21 AI for FinOps Tools 26:50 FinOps Agent Vision 27:50 Platform Engineering Link 31:24 Cloud Efficiency Engineer Role 36:25 Getting Started in FinOps 40:16 Community Wrap and Takeaways Subscribe for more FinOps leadership conversations → https://www.finopsinaction.com/ Quote of the Show: "It all starts somewhere. It starts with poking into that data transfer dashboard and figuring out what's going on. Just get those wins, chipping away at the low hanging fruit.” - Michael Graff Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelegraff/ Website: https://www.dolby.com/ Ways to Tune In: Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808 iHeart Radio: https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/ Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t Substack: https://finopsinaction.substack.com/ Transistor: finopsinaction.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PointFive_Inc

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  Episode #79

  Is Your AI Spend Actually Paying Off | Ep # 79

  Jul 30, 202623 min

  This episode of FinOps in Action pulls together voices from across the industry, including Pathik Sharma of Google Cloud, Emily Cornock, Kevin Mueller, Zach Johnson, Henrique, Shailaja Beeram, Marit Hughes, and Oliver Milke, all wrestling with the same question: how do you actually manage the cost of AI. Two years ago the idea of "AI for FinOps" got brushed off as premature. Now it sits in the top three priorities in the FinOps Foundation's own survey data, and for good reason. The guests dig into why AI spend is accelerating faster than cloud ever did, why most companies still cannot prove ROI on it, and what it actually looks like to build guardrails without slowing teams down. It is a rapid fire look at where FinOps practice is headed as AI stops being a side experiment and starts becoming the biggest line item on the P&L. Here’s what we talked about: Treat your AI investment like a science experiment. Control your variables, change one thing at a time, and always tie spend back to a measurable business outcome, not just a feeling that things are getting more productive. Token cost is only the tip of the iceberg. Storage, the adaptive storage layer, GPU and TPU compute, and platform hosting all add up, so don't let your team optimize the visible 20% while ignoring the rest. Not all AI actions carry the same risk, so treat them differently. Let AI handle low stakes, non disruptive work like cost allocation labeling on its own, but keep a human in the loop for anything disruptive, like rightsizing a Kubernetes workload during Black Friday. Don't let analysis paralysis become your default setting. Make your best reasonable estimate on AI spend, document your assumptions, and move forward instead of letting fear triple your forecasts. Shift FinOps further left than you think you need to. Get engineering and product involved in AI cost conversations early, because the goal is not command and control, it's giving teams the data to make good decisions themselves. Chapters: 00:00 Welcome to FinOps 00:18 AI Meets FinOps 01:12 Spend Growth Shock 01:40 Tech Pace Explosion 02:28 Making AI Serious 02:52 FinOps DNA for AI 03:29 ROI Reality Check 04:26 Experiment With Controls 05:06 Claims AI Success Story 06:49 Unit Economics Mindset 07:37 Measure Value and Impact 09:27 Enable Not Control 10:19 Link Tools to Outcomes 11:04 Orchestrators Change Costs 11:48 Guardrails and Fact Checks 13:12 Copilot Dashboards to Agents 14:20 Safe Automation Actions 17:16 Managing AI Spend Layers Subscribe for more FinOps leadership conversations → https://www.finopsinaction.com/ Quote of the Show: "Think about AI as that eager intern. It can do the work, but you also need to trust, verify, and wait for the manager to give you a nod." – Pathik Sharma Connect with the Guest’s: Emily Cornock: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilycornock/ Oliver Milke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliver-milke/ Kevin Mueller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmueller/ Marit Hughes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marit-hughes/ Shailaja Beeram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shailaja-beeram-82324310a/ Pathik Sharma: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pathik-sharma/ Zach Johnson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realzachjohnson/ Henrique Amorim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henriqueamorim/ Ways to Tune In: Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808 iHeart Radio: https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/ Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t Substack: https://finopsinaction.substack.com/ Transistor: finopsinaction.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PointFive_Inc

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  Episode #78

  Sales Strategy Meets Practitioner Reality ft. Sean Kennedy and Amanda Wagner | Ep #78

  Jul 23, 202639 min

  What happens when you put the strategic and operational sides of FinOps in the same room? In this episode of FinOps in Action, host Taylor Houck welcomes two guests for the first time on the show, Sean Kennedy, Senior Cloud FinOps Consultant, and Amanda Wagner, Cloud FinOps Consultant, both from Trace3. Sean focuses on presales strategy and partner enablement across Trace3's FinOps practice, while Amanda works directly with a portfolio of customers on the practitioner side. Together they unpack why FinOps never really finishes, how customer maturity changes the conversation, and what the AI cost landscape looks like right now. Here’s what we talked about: FinOps is a cycle, not a destination. There's no finish line, just an ongoing loop of informing, optimizing, and operating that adapts as engineering, pricing, and business needs change. Document your processes before you need them. Repeatable procedures for tagging, showback, and optimization reviews protect your FinOps program from falling apart when key people leave. Meet customers at their maturity level. Don't push budgeting and forecasting on a team that's still working on basic visibility; introduce concepts in bite-sized chunks as they're ready. The biggest wins often come from on-prem-to-cloud transitions. Companies migrating legacy infrastructure and mindsets tend to have the most untapped savings potential, partly because the human resistance to change is as big a factor as the technical work. Clarify what "AI spend" actually means before optimizing it. Seat-based licenses, hyperscaler AI services, GPU infrastructure, and token-based usage are all totally different cost problems that need different strategies. Chapters: 00:00 Welcome to the Show 00:51 Meet Sean and Amanda 01:51 Sean's Role at Trace3 02:41 Amanda's Practitioner Lens 03:18 Myth of Being Done 04:09 Mindset Shift From IT 05:05 FinOps as Org Adoption 06:15 Repeatable Processes Matter 07:09 Core FinOps Processes 08:12 Enterprise vs Commercial Needs 11:10 When Spend Forces FinOps 12:03 Start Early and Build Habits 14:36 Meeting Customers Where They Are 16:32 Who Gains the Most 23:18 AI Expands FinOps Scope 27:56 Forecasting and Optimizing AI 31:44 Closing and Personal Journeys Subscribe for more FinOps leadership conversations → https://www.finopsinaction.com/ Quote of the Show: “"I think the myth is that FinOps is something that you finish, right? You don't ever arrive at FinOps." - Amanda Wagner Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda--wagner/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean~kennedy/ Website: https://www.trace3.com/ Ways to Tune In: Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808 iHeart Radio: https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/ Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t Substack: https://finopsinaction.substack.com/ Transistor: finopsinaction.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PointFive_Inc

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  Episode #77

  Engineering Enterprise FinOps ft. Piotr Kuczmera | Ep # 77

  Jul 16, 202635 min

  What if the biggest mistake your FinOps program makes is skipping the requirements phase entirely? In this episode of FinOps in Action, host Taylor Houck sits down with Piotr Kuczmera, Head of FinOps at ZF Group, to unpack how he built a FinOps practice from scratch at a 150,000 person global enterprise, and why the first question every organization should ask is not "how do we cut costs" but "what exactly do we need?" Piotr shares how a single report request from his manager five years ago turned into a full scale internal FinOps platform, a hub and spoke operating model across 15 to 20 business units, and a team built on the combination of FinOps practitioners and data engineers working side by side. Here is what they covered: Why FinOps is more than cost savings. Piotr explains that equating FinOps with cost optimization alone leads to failed implementations, and that starting with a clear requirements conversation, like a tailor fitting a suit to the right occasion, is what sets a practice up for long term success. How chargeback became the turning point. When ZF connected individual names to specific budgets and sent real invoices, something clicked. Engineers and budget holders stopped asking about aggregate project spend and started asking "why am I paying this much and how do I reduce it?" The case for building your own platform. ZF evaluated the major third party FinOps tools and walked away. Licensing costs, limited multi-cloud support, and a lack of flexibility in adapting to existing finance and procurement processes all pointed toward a homegrown solution built on native cloud tooling and a BI layer they already owned. The hub and spoke model for FinOps at scale. At the center sits a core team of FinOps consultants and data engineers. In each business unit, a nominated budget owner and a FinOps champion bridge the gap between central strategy and local execution. AI for FinOps, not just FinOps for AI. Piotr is most energized by how AI can automate repetitive FinOps workflows and take recommendations beyond basic CPU and memory parameters to consider commitment connections, usage patterns, and resource families all at once. He also sees FinOps as a function that should open doors for AI adoption, not slow it down. FinOps as connective tissue. Across financial colleagues, engineering teams, and business managers, Piotr sees FinOps as the function responsible for translating the right information to the right persona, not flooding finance with VM data, and not giving engineers a budget variance they cannot act on. Chapters: 00:00 What Every Company Gets Wrong About FinOps 01:27 Meet Piotr Kuczmera 02:14 FinOps Is Not Just Cost Savings 03:30 Building Trust Across Departments 05:00 The FinOps Team Structure at ZF Group 08:00 Hub and Spoke: Champions and Budget Owners 10:00 Scale and Cadence Across 15 to 20 Categories 12:00 Back to the Beginning: One Report at a Time 14:00 Build vs Buy: The Platform Decision 18:00 Why Ownership of Data Changes Everything 21:00 Chargeback as the Accountability Switch 23:00 Translating FinOps Across Personas 25:00 FinOps as Connective Tissue 26:00 AI for FinOps and FinOps for AI 29:00 Treating AI Spend Like Any Other Cloud Service 30:00 What the Well Tailored FinOps Suit Looks Like in One Year 31:00 From Math Degree to FinOps Leader 33:00 Advice for Early Career FinOps Professionals 34:00 Where to Find Piotr Quote of the Show: "Stay humble and don't be afraid of challenges." - Piotr Kuczmera 🎧 Subscribe for more FinOps leadership conversations: https://www.finopsinaction.com/ Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piotr-kuczmera-59b39712a/ Website: https://www.zf.com/usa_canada/en/home/home.html Ways to Tune In: Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808 iHeart Radio: https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/ Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t Substack: https://finopsinaction.substack.com/ Transistor: finopsinaction.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PointFive_Inc

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  Episode #76

  The Price of Cost Awareness ft. Ruby Agarwal | Ep #76

  Jul 9, 202641 min

  What if the biggest cloud savings opportunity isn't hidden in your infrastructure, but in the decisions made before the first line of code is written? In this episode of FinOps in Action, Taylor sits down with Ruby Agarwal, VP of Engineering at Avaya, whose responsibilities span engineering, DevOps, DevSecOps, CloudOps, and FinOps. Ruby shares how her team reduced cloud spend by 75% in just two months, why visibility matters more than perfect data, and how cost awareness becomes part of engineering culture rather than a one-time optimization project. They also explore how AI is changing operational decision-making and why the future of FinOps will depend on balancing innovation with discipline. Takeaways: Start with visibility, not spreadsheets of despair. Ruby's team didn't need perfect data to cut 75% of spend, they needed a one-slider view everyone could understand. Skip the 20 page report and focus your team's attention on the handful of buckets driving most of the cost. Cost isn't the enemy, inefficiency is. Turning everything off would bring spending to zero, but that's not the goal. The goal is getting the same performance, reliability, and security for less, not gutting the services delivering value. Build your COGS model before you write code. On Avaya Infinity, Ruby's team defined their cost model before a single line was written, and they publish and measure it every month. Bake cost discipline into the architecture from day one instead of cleaning up after launch. Separate your AI innovation zone from your production zone. Let engineers experiment freely with the most powerful models while building, but production agents don't need the flashiest reasoning model, they need the cheapest one that gets the job done reliably. The skills that carry your career aren't technical. Ruby calls systems thinking, structured decision-making, communication, and connection-building the real differentiators, not soft skills but critical skills. Investing in those early pays off longer than any single technology wave. Chapters: 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 01:25 The 75 Percent Story Setup 01:45 Project Context Multi Cloud 02:37 Cataloging Costs and Buckets 03:21 Quick Wins Labs Scheduling 04:15 Storage Cleanup and Tiering 04:30 Dashboards Make It Visible 05:44 Working With Developers 06:50 Culture Tools and Training 08:58 Cross Functional Momentum 10:29 FinOps From Day One 11:21 Avaya Infinity COGS Model 13:37 Who Owns Cost Decisions 15:28 Need Dedicated FinOps 18:00 80 20 Cost Focus 21:08 Cost Fear vs Cloud Value 23:04 Regulated Industry Constraints 26:38 AI Agents and Model Costs 32:53 Future of Operational Intelligence 35:30 Career Advice Beyond Tech 37:36 Giving Back and Mentoring 39:23 Closing Thanks and Wrap 🎧 Subscribe for more FinOps leadership conversations → https://www.finopsinaction.com/ Quote of the Show: “ Your first cloud cost bill will be dependent on what architectural decisions you have made for your projects.” - Ruby Agarwal Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubyagarwal/ Website: https://www.avaya.com/en/ Ways to Tune In: Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808 iHeart Radio: https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/ Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t Substack: https://finopsinaction.substack.com/ Transistor: finopsinaction.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PointFive_Inc

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