Most IT leaders struggle to prove ROI from cloud spending
The report, entitled "Performance vs. Perception: The FinOps Execution Gap," was conducted in partnership with Wakefield Research. It surveyed 350 senior IT leaders across various industries in the United States to assess the current state of Financial Operations (FinOps) practices regarding cloud cost management.
The research identifies a notable disconnect between perceived levels of maturity in FinOps practices and the actual operational effectiveness in managing and optimising cloud costs. Although many respondents label their FinOps approaches as mature and automated, a substantial number reveal ongoing challenges in consistently demonstrating the value generated from cloud investments.
According to the findings, 78% of IT leaders admitted to difficulties in consistently showcasing cloud ROI. When asked to define ROI, respondents primarily pointed to revenue growth (43%), followed by operational efficiency and productivity (36%), and cost savings (35%).
The report also found strong acknowledgement of the rising impact of Kubernetes on cloud expenditure. While 98% of participants agree that Kubernetes is becoming a significant driver of cloud spend, 91% admit they are unable to optimise their Kubernetes clusters effectively, identifying a gap in operational capabilities as container adoption increases.
Many organisations report relatively high levels of automation in their cloud operations. The study reveals that 66% of respondents say their environments are mostly or fully automated for cloud waste management and spend optimisation. Despite this, 58% indicate that identifying and remediating cloud-cost waste can still take weeks or months, raising questions about the true extent of automation achieved by these organisations.
Kyle Campos, Chief Technology and Product Officer at CloudBolt, stated: "FinOps as a discipline is more sound than ever and continues to evolve effectively. But a good percentage of organizations may be taking a victory lap before even navigating the first turn. Through this research, it's evident that while a majority indicate they believe they've achieved FinOps maturity, the data shows they are still in the early stages of operationalizing and optimizing FinOps practices. Confidence in lieu of measurable progress obscures reality and hinders the improvement necessary for significant business impact."
When identifying barriers to optimising ROI from cloud investments, 55% of respondents cited difficulty in linking cloud expenditure directly to business outcomes. Other key challenges include organisational misalignment and operational silos (48%), as well as issues related to inefficient resource management, such as poor tagging and inconsistent accountability (44%).
The report also highlights the ongoing relevance of private cloud and data centres in driving ROI, with hybrid multi-cloud management identified as the top priority for 42% of those surveyed. Over the next six to twelve months, 39% of respondents expect hybrid cloud management to be a funded priority, second only to the optimisation of artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads (AI/ML cloud-cost optimisation), which was cited by 40%.
Campos added: "Leaders believe they have visibility into their cloud spend. Yet without necessary governance, enforcement, and effective remediation, they are doing little to reduce the insight-to-action gap – the time it takes to go from 'we have a problem' to 'problem fixed and cost optimized.' This leads to persistent inefficiencies and inflated costs. Kubernetes and AI-driven workloads especially highlight this disconnect – rapid adoption without proper operational control and automated actions (both retrospective and proactive) is dramatically affecting return on investment. If FinOps practices are not focusing on continuous optimization and employing the capabilities to execute on that, organizations will continue to struggle to effectively show cloud ROI."
The full report includes comprehensive data analysis and recommendations, addressing the existing gaps between FinOps perceptions and the realities of cloud operational performance.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Techday NZ
a day ago
- Techday NZ
Red Hat named leader for multicloud container platforms by Forrester
Red Hat has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Multicloud Container Platforms, Q3 2025 report, based on its performance in the multicloud container platform market. Forrester's assessment The Forrester Wave report evaluated several vendors in the multicloud container platform market, focusing on both the current offering and company strategy categories. Red Hat was highlighted for scoring the highest among all evaluated vendors in these categories. The report described OpenShift as "a good fit for enterprises that prioritise support, reliability, and advanced engineering, particularly in regulated industries such as financial services." It also observed that "customers consistently praise Red Hat's enterprise-grade offerings and support, especially for managed services." Forrester noted Red Hat's capabilities in Kubernetes, saying, "Red Hat excels in core Kubernetes areas, offering robust operator options, powerful management, GitOps automation, and flexible interfaces via a GUI or command-line interface (CLI). OpenShift's SLAs of 99.95% for public cloud managed-service versions showcase Red Hat's capacity to engineer capabilities beyond those of native public cloud services." The report additionally stated, "Developers will find just about everything they need with Red Hat's above-par scores in developer experience, service and application catalogues, microservices, service mesh, DevOps automation, and integration." Technical focus and AI integration Beyond container management, Red Hat is extending its efforts in hybrid cloud solutions. The company is leveraging its stack - including Red Hat Enterprise Linux - to improve support for generative AI development and operations, with an emphasis on model serving and advanced inference. Customer priorities and market needs The report noted that OpenShift has demonstrated suitability for organisations operating in highly regulated industries, such as financial services, where support and reliability are considered essential. The platform's managed services, which offer defined service-level agreements, were singled out for positive feedback from customers. The importance of a strong enterprise support model for public cloud deployments was also highlighted in the analysis. Leadership statement Mike Barrett, Vice President & General Manager, Hybrid Cloud Platforms, Red Hat, said: "Red Hat continues to provide the leading platform for organisations navigating the complexities of multicloud environments. Being named a Leader in The Forrester WaveTM for Multicloud Container Platforms reinforces our commitment to delivering robust, enterprise-grade solutions that empower our customers to innovate with confidence across their hybrid cloud footprints. Our focus on core Kubernetes capabilities, strong developer experience and strategic AI integrations positions us well for the evolving needs of the market. Sovereign cloud, coupled with the digital independence required to get the most from AI, have made multicloud investments a leading priority for our global customers." Developer perspective The Forrester evaluation recognised Red Hat's OpenShift for the breadth of its support for developers, including tooling for DevOps automation, service catalogues, and integration features. The solution was described as delivering above-average scores in developer experience, microservices, and service mesh capabilities. Market context As enterprise IT organisations continue to adopt hybrid and multicloud strategies, platforms capable of delivering consistent operations and supporting evolving application needs are increasingly important. The 99.95% public cloud managed service SLA cited by Forrester underlines the attention to reliability and service continuity expected in this sector. Red Hat continues to broaden the reach of its hybrid cloud portfolio, applying the foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to support both traditional enterprise workloads and emerging technologies such as generative AI.
Techday NZ
18-07-2025
- Techday NZ
DuploCloud AI Suite launches on AWS Marketplace to boost DevOps
DuploCloud has announced the availability of its AI Suite through the new AI Agents and Tools category in the AWS Marketplace. The launch enables AWS customers to discover, purchase, and deploy DuploCloud's Agentic Help Desk for DevOps, providing tools designed to accelerate the development and deployment of AI agents and workflow automation within AWS environments. Marketplace expansion The AI Agents and Tools category in AWS Marketplace functions as a unified catalogue for a variety of artificial intelligence solutions from AWS Partners. DuploCloud's inclusion in this catalogue means customers can streamline their procurement events, accessing AI solutions via their existing AWS accounts and infrastructure. According to DuploCloud, the AI Suite is designed to help organisations minimise manual DevOps tasks and automate cloud operations. The suite includes built-in security protocols to simplify DevOps management and scale cloud-based initiatives, offering customers the ability to focus resources on core software development rather than operational overheads. Agentic Help Desk and AI Studio AI Suite introduces several key components for customers. At the centre is the AI Help Desk, which leverages large language models (LLMs) alongside live infrastructure data. This tool converts user requests into executable actions, facilitating human approval and teamwork as part of agentic DevOps workflows. The suite also features an AI Studio that supports the creation and deployment of agents within containerised Kubernetes environments. These tools together allow users to automate even highly complex workflows based on written prompts. The platform executes these tasks securely, not merely suggesting actions, but taking steps towards their completion whilst retaining oversight and approval workflows for teams managing critical infrastructure. Streamlining procurement Participation in the AWS Marketplace's new AI category enables organisations to accelerate their procurement and deployment of AI technologies. By leveraging their AWS accounts, customers are able to maintain central oversight of software licenses, billing, and user permissions, reducing delays previously caused by extended vendor negotiations and multi-party evaluations for technology adoption. Venkat Thiruvengadam, Chief Executive Officer at DuploCloud, highlighted the company's aims for the partnership, stating: "We're excited to offer AI Suite in the new AWS Marketplace AI Agents and Tools Category. AWS Marketplace allows us to provide customers with a streamlined way to access our Agentic Help Desk for DevOps, helping them elevate DevOps from writing scripts to building agentic, cross-system workflows." Focus on automation and security The company describes its AI Suite as capable of supporting both human oversight and end-to-end automation, integrating compliance and security controls throughout its operations. It aims to empower teams to operate cloud infrastructure efficiently without the necessity of traditional Infrastructure-as-Code expertise. As the AI marketplace grows, automation and collaboration features are positioned as essential for enterprises seeking rapid development and compliance within cloud environments. Customers in the AWS ecosystem now have access to DuploCloud's tools without navigating new procurement processes or vendor relationships. By centralising AI DevOps workflow capabilities in the AWS Marketplace, organisations can adopt self-service models underpinned by automation, while maintaining existing security and governance standards. DuploCloud positions its offering for both startup and enterprise customers looking to launch products faster and scale DevOps practices without significantly increasing personnel or operational complexity. Follow us on: Share on:
Techday NZ
16-07-2025
- Techday NZ
Financial sector ramps up GenAI use but skills & risks remain
New research from Nutanix has revealed that financial services organisations are broadly adopting generative AI (GenAI), with implementations extending well beyond chatbot applications into areas such as fraud detection, cybersecurity, and customer experience. The findings are based on the company's seventh annual global Financial Services Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey, which assessed enterprise cloud adoption, containerisation, and GenAI trends among IT and DevOps decision-makers across the sector. Almost every respondent reported current use of GenAI, including for customer support and content development. Widespread adoption and expanding use cases While initial industry enthusiasm for GenAI focused on front-line tools such as chatbots, the research highlights that organisations are increasingly applying it to core operations such as automation, fraud detection, and enhancing client engagement. Nutanix noted that solutions are being used to automate workflows, generate content, and deliver customer support at scale. However, the rapid uptake of these technologies is exposing several industry-wide challenges. Most respondents expressed concerns about their readiness to operate GenAI applications securely and at scale, with particular anxiety about data privacy and security risks. "Financial services organisations are turning to containers and hybrid cloud not just as technology upgrades, but as strategic enablers of customer value," said Lee Caswell, SVP of Product and Solutions Marketing at Nutanix. "This year's ECI report highlights how these technologies are delivering measurable ROI by powering GenAI applications that enhance fraud detection, strengthen cybersecurity, and elevate customer engagement. For financial institutions, containers and hybrid cloud have become essential tools to drive innovation, agility, and trust in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. "But AI and how organisations want to use it is also changing very rapidly. While GenAI remains a part of their activities, beyond the findings in the report, our customers are telling us they have moved to adopt agentic AI and are looking to harness its potential across their organisations and in how they interact with their customers." Infrastructure and skills lag behind The majority of survey respondents admitted that the foundational requirements to scale GenAI are not yet fully in place. In total, 97% said their organisations need to do more to secure their GenAI models and applications, and 92% agreed their infrastructure must be modernised to support cloud-native applications and containers. Containerisation and tools such as Kubernetes are already widely deployed, especially for GenAI workloads. Nevertheless, organisations continue to wrestle with issues such as application portability and the persistence of data silos across their operations. Talent shortages hinder scaling A further significant barrier for the sector is the ongoing shortage of skilled IT personnel capable of deploying GenAI from development into production environments. Nearly all respondents (98%) cited difficulty in scaling up due to insufficient expertise and integration challenges, prompting 62% to say they are actively hiring for GenAI-related roles. Many organisations highlighted the urgent need for training and upskilling existing staff. Mixed outlook for returns While the long-term expectations for GenAI remain positive, the immediate financial outlook is less certain. Just under 40% of those surveyed anticipated possible GenAI-related losses over the next year, while 58% expect to see returns on investment within one to three years. This highlights that many organisations see the value of GenAI as a longer-term play but are seeking more reliable ways to track and measure its impact. Security and compliance front of mind With increasing reliance on data-driven systems, security and compliance are rising priorities across the sector. The majority of respondents - 96% - said GenAI is already reshaping how they set data security and privacy policies. Furthermore, 90% raised concerns about security throughout the IT vendor ecosystem, pointing to the growing complexity of safeguarding data and applications in cloud environments. The ECI study was conducted by UK-based researcher Vanson Bourne in autumn 2024, polling 1,500 IT and platform engineering leaders from a range of firm sizes and regions globally, including North and South America, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific-Japan.
