The modern-day managed service provider (MSP) industry has come a long way, looking almost nothing like the glorified hardware and software vendors MSPs were when the sector began. The rapid advent of digital transformation forced MSPs to become IT experts, across all functional areas, such as a trial, installation, training, management, support, maintenance, and upgrades. MSPs today are digital “jack-of-all-trades,” managing infrastructure ranging from user devices and computers to firewalls, routers, switches, active directories, exchange servers, active directory servers, and data servers.
While MSPs can handle a variety of digital services for clientele, among the more prominent of MSPs’ responsibilities is the managing of cloud infrastructure. Cloud technology deploys quickly, is easily configured, and is simple to manage, which originally made the technology desirable for MSPs to add to their offerings. MSPs soon realized the plethora of benefits the cloud provided, such as outsourcing some of their infrastructure and having fresh sources of innovation available that can lead to a differentiating experience for their clients.
However, recently optimizing cloud services and expenditures has become a point of emphasis for enterprises in all industries as cloud waste rises to new heights. According to a recent survey, asking how much of their cloud expenditure is being used efficiently, the average estimate was 68 percent, leaving 32 percent wasted, up from 30 percent in years prior. Furthermore, cloud projects come in at an average of 13 percent over budget.
MSPs are now the ones expected to handle this wasteful cloud crisis as enhanced efficiency of cloud services skyrockets to the top of clientele demands. For many MSPs, innovative devices and applications have helped this process, with technology such as cloud optimization platforms making a difference. However, while these devices can help, the framework of principles known as FinOps has recently made headway when attempting to improve cloud spending.
A FinOps Framework for All
FinOps, which is simply a combination of the terms finance and DevOps, is a framework for managing Opex across an organization, often in conjunction with the cloud and cloud computing. FinOps goes beyond the goal of simply saving money and strives to drive revenue by helping cross-discipline teams collaborate to make the best decisions regarding performance, quality, and cost in technology investment and execution decisions, mainly surrounding cloud decisions and usage.
This is because the idea that FinOps bases its framework on is that a business should make the “best” investment decisions, not just the lowest cost decisions. Furthermore, an important goal of a FinOps framework is to help engineering, finance, business, and technology teams within the same organization achieve business value and maintain financial accountability for cloud services.
For MSPs, a great opportunity lies in the ability to develop and grow customers’ FinOps practices by using data and strategic collaboration to help connect advanced cost management metrics to their wider business goals. FinOps shouldn’t be looked at as a threat, much like the industry once did with cloud computing. Instead, the rapid rise of FinOps should be seen as a bountiful opportunity for MSPs, as the framework can provide MSPs with a vast array of benefits, with the core concepts making FinOps the ideal program for MSPs to drive.
For example, for MSPs, driving FinOps practices provides better cloud visibility and more meaningful levels of savings. FinOps aids MSPs in creating more confidence among clients when it comes to leveraging the cloud efficiently, as concerns about unexpected overruns and the ability to optimize costs remain key barriers to cloud migration. These insights can also help alleviate stakeholders’ fears, which can encourage them to move more workloads to the cloud even faster.
On top of this, offering FinOps can be a key aspect that helps MSPs differentiate themselves from other businesses within a marketplace amidst what is setting up to be a highly competitive digital era. As more and more businesses enter the cloud services space, creating differentiated service offerings is increasingly important to attract new customers, and FinOps presents MSPs with the opportunity to engage new and existing customers with unique value propositions and methodologies.
Kalirb8’s Part
At Kalibr8, we understand how essential it is for MSPs to be able to reduce client cloud expenditures, as cloud offerings have nearly become the backbone of the managed services industry. This is why Kalibr8 provides an operating system that can enable MSPs to start their own FinOps practices, allowing themselves to evolve and transform into modern-day FinOps MSPs.
Our platform offers MSPs an automated cloud optimization & cost management platform with an intuitive and efficient “single pane of glass” view into all aspects that impact getting the most value for the least cost.
Kalibr8’s platform can help MSPs dramatically reduce clientele cloud spending, delivering up to 65 percent in monthly savings. The platform does this by assisting MSPs to allocate costs accurately, identify unmanaged resources, implement effective governance, and automate cumbersome administrations. Overall, by working with Kalibr8 and leveraging our Kalibr8 cloud optimization platform, our MSP partners can start their journey to building and providing an adequate FinOps framework that improves cloud efficiency. This lets them work with their customers to maximize budgets and confidence in their cloud opex and can view costs and savings by resources, group, subscription, or tenant, benefiting both MSPs and their clientele in the short and long term.
