Kyle Campos, Chief Technology & Product Officer, CloudBolt Software.
Gartner’s 2025 forecast reveals a dramatic boost in cloud spend: public cloud investments are expected to soar by 21.5%, and 90% of organizations will have adopted a hybrid cloud approach by 2027. This massive growth positions FinOps teams as the linchpin of cloud strategy, with business leaders relying on them to optimize resources, improve operations and maximize ROI.
The key to scaling FinOps quickly and unlocking real, strategic value lies in automation, largely enabled by AI. However, the reality is that while automation is used in most areas of IT, it’s surprisingly underutilized in FinOps. Most activities still require human intervention, hampering efficiency and slowing down the return on investment of cloud initiatives.
The time to prioritize automation in FinOps is now.
Begin By Asking These Five Questions
Modern cloud environments are complex, and manual, repetitive tasks are not sustainable for FinOps teams. To refocus on high-impact initiatives, FinOps teams must move toward active, intuitive automation that supports business objectives. The promising news is that most FinOps practitioners have automation on their radar: the FinOps Foundation’s 2024 State of FinOps report found that enabling automation is a key priority for over 50% of respondents.
The following questions have guided me, and they can help you gauge where your FinOps practice stands—and more importantly, where it needs to go—to leverage automation strategically.
• How frequently do automation processes run, and are they integrated into daily operations? FinOps automation maturity depends on regular execution and seamless integration. Mature automation evolves from sporadic, one-off tasks to continuous, real-time operations.
• What is the cognitive load required to manage and oversee automation? As automation matures, the need for human intervention drops. Moving from manually-intensive tasks to AI-powered automation reduces cognitive load, enabling teams to focus on innovation and strategic initiatives.
• How easily can stakeholders across the organization access and leverage automation tools? Accessibility and usability are critical to adoption. Self-service availability fosters collaboration, eliminates redundant efforts, and ensures consistent cloud cost management across departments.
• Can automation systems adapt to changes in business priorities, workloads or market conditions? Scalable, adaptable automation is key in dynamic cloud environments. Mature systems progress from rigid, bespoke solutions to agile solutions that evolve with business needs.
• To what extent does automation drive tangible business outcomes? Automation should go beyond basic cost savings for isolated tasks to fully support strategic business initiatives, enhance ROI, and drive growth.
The “Crawl, Walk, Run” Approach To Automation Maturity
The “Crawl, Walk, Run” approach provides a practical roadmap for FinOps teams to advance their use of automation, evolving from basic, ad hoc use to strategic process improvements. By addressing five key elements—frequency, cognitive load, accessibility, adaptability and business impact—FinOps teams can lay the groundwork for sustained success.
Crawl: Start By Automating Low-Hanging Fruit
Begin by focusing on repetitive, low-value tasks like cost reporting and tagging compliance. Rule-based automation tools can help standardize processes and reduce errors, providing immediate efficiency gains. For example, automating routine reports on cloud usage and spending delivers accurate insights while freeing teams to focus on higher-value activities.
Keys to success:
• Schedule basic automation processes to run consistently, moving beyond ad hoc, reactive execution.
• Invest in training and tools to reduce human oversight, ensuring teams can implement and manage automation effectively.
• Ensure these tools are easily accessible and usable for all team members, fostering broad adoption and collaboration.
Walk: Optimize Processes & Assess AI Readiness
At this stage, it’s time to introduce data-driven tools that yield actionable insights on processes like cloud spend forecasting and usage alerts.
This is also the stage where FinOps teams should consider whether AI is the right choice. What issues can AI improve? Can your data support these initiatives? If so, begin exploring which tools will best support your business objectives.
For example, AI-driven budgeting tools can forecast and predict cloud spend based on historical and real-time data, improving accuracy. By deploying solutions that seamlessly adapt to changes in workloads and business priorities, teams can lay the groundwork for intelligent automation.
Keys to success:
• Leverage automation tools that adjust in real time, enabling more accurate forecasting and agility.
• Implement basic optimization and automation strategies, such rightsizing and removing of idle resources
• Adopt AI-powered tools that automate complex decision-making processes to reduce mental load and optimize FinOps processes.
Run: Fully Embrace Automation & AI for the Greatest Impact
In this advanced stage, FinOps teams are ready to fully embrace automation and AI.
Complex tasks like determining how to optimize cloud costs—a traditionally time-consuming process that involves many variables like pricing models and performance metrics—are transformed with AI, which can automate up to 80% of the analysis.
For example, deploying AI agents to continuously monitor and optimize resources ensures consistent cost savings, peak performance and alignment with evolving business priorities. This level of maturity transforms FinOps from a support function into a true strategic partner.
Keys to Success:
• Tie automation initiatives directly to measurable business outcomes, such as cost savings, deployment speed, and operational efficiency.
• Enable continuous, real-time optimization across all FinOps processes, ensuring resilience in dynamic, multi-cloud environments.
• Embrace AI pragmatically, and ensure tools and insights are accessible across stakeholders, promoting consistent and collaborative cloud cost management.
For Continued Success, Lean Into Augmented FinOps
To deliver the cloud ROI that leadership expects, FinOps teams must acknowledge that the future lies in automation—and now is the time to take that leap.
Traditional FinOps is reactive and bogged down by manual, time-consuming processes. Enter Augmented FinOps, which harnesses intelligent automation and AI to evolve FinOps from a basic cost management function to a scalable and strategic powerhouse.
With augmented capabilities, FinOps teams can optimize cloud usage and instantaneously act on insights, driving efficiency, cost savings, and alignment with business goals. However, you have to implement strategically, so following the “Crawl, Walk, Run” framework will help FinOps mature into the strategic partners they are destined to be, delivering sustained value and innovation.
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