So . . . what is it that you do?
In which I describe my job, dive into the types of FinOps conversations I have, then make a hard shift and relive my favorite moment from Eurovision 2021 and weigh in on The Beatles.
Explaining what I do for a living to people who don’t work in technology (yes, those people are real and they do exist!) has never been easy. I used to say something generic like “I work in the cloud.” I stopped using that explanation because a surprisingly large number of people think the cloud is their SharePoint site and want me to help them fix their broken workflows. “No, not that cloud,” I would say and shuffle off.
After watching me work from home during the pandemic, my children think that my job is to yell at computer monitors all day. My wife, on the other hand, developed a more nuanced view of my job. She explains it as ‘getting paid to talk to people, mostly just repeating common sense and adult skills to them over and over again.’ Yes . . . yes . . . that is not inaccurate.
A definition of FinOps (and my job) is that it is about leveraging the variable cost model of cloud and the related technologies to drive value. This explanation is simple and meaningful to me, but to others: buzzwords. A more practical way to explain it is: knowing what you are paying for and making decisions about whether you want more or less of it. And yes, this requires conversations and the consistent application of common sense and adult skills over and over again.
About those conversations: It is deeply satisfying to sit with someone, show them what they have, the rate they pay, the amount they consumed, and their total expense. Then discussing with them about all of that in relation to their specific application and whether they want more or less of a cloud service (or a different service altogether). The questions I ask are ‘do you understand what you are paying for? Is this what you need? Are there alternatives and if so, what would it cost to implement those alternatives?’
It’s a great conversation and I enjoy it quite a bit. I’m trying to increase value. What I’m not doing is trying to get the cheapest possible cost every single time. Conversations trying to drive to the lowest cost, generally, focus on rate optimization instead of usage optimization. Bear with me cause I think there is a lesson in thinking about FinOps conversations.
Cloud Expense = Rate x Usage.
When the conversation is on the question ‘what is cheaper?’, the focus tends to be overly focused on Rate. How can we make the rate cheaper? What is the public cloud rate vs the internal cost? There are Savings Plans/Reserved Instances/Committed Use Discounts to lower your rate. You should leverage them accordingly, but also know the trade-off of those discounts is that you remove some of the flexibility to optimize usage. Driving down the lowest possible rate can inhibit your ability to leverage variable usage and/or new technologies. Get those discounts, but get them wisely.
Rate optimization is about lowering the cost without changing anything applications currently do. On the other hand, Usage optimization is about transforming the application behavior to use less infrastructure resources. Application teams that migrate to the cloud have not often had to consider the usage of resources. Running a virtual server 24/7 was the same cost as running it 12/5. If you turn off a virtual server or delete unused storage on-prem, you haven’t changed the depreciation expense at all. Elastic infrastructure in the public clouds is a gateway to more cloud-native services. Cloud-native services can be transformational to an application because suddenly, a lot of the backend maintenance and support - (patching, image management, etc.) things that the customer/user of the application does not want to know about and assumes it’s taken care of with no inconvenience to them - is removed from the equation.
A robust FinOps conversation has to be about how the application uses resources. What is the sizing, run time, services, and architecture? When are the developers working? When are the customers using the system? Notice how the questions go from resources to developers to customers? That’s a well-rounded conversation.
I can certainly have a conversation focused on the lowest cost. I can help you hit your cost center budget. But we aren’t talking about value generation at that point, we’re simply talking about expense management. There is a time and a place for that conversation, no doubt. However, if those are the only types of conversations you ever have, your FinOps work isn’t about generating value and growth.
The conversations are the easy part. That's why I enjoy them. It’s far harder to describe this to the guy who walks up and asks “So what do you do for a living?” I still just say “cloud stuff” and shuffle away.
Recommended Podcast
One of my personal highlights this year was watching the Eurovision song contest. It’s fast-paced with the songs taking off one right after another. It was great fun to watch. My favorite moment from the competition:
ZERO POINTS! How is that possible????
Well, let's be fair. Have you ever heard Alex Hullah’s voice? Great talking voice. I could listen to him talk for at least a few minutes at a time. But singing? No. The same could be said about most of the non-Adele Brits.
Alex Hullah uses his bad singing/good talking voice to discuss cloud-things with guests on Cloudbusters that he co-hosts with Mallory Beaudreau, (photo of the two below)
The video podcast is well worth watching - not just so you can get the killer joke I just made with the above picture, but it's a legit good show with great guests. I recommend the episode where they interview some of my favorite FinOpy-people, Steph Gooch and Rob Martin, as well as the episode where they interview one of my real-life friends, Ryan Hughes.
Click on the links, have a laugh at my joke, but be sure to listen to the smart people say smart things.
The Beatles
I mean, zero points . . . NIL!
But the UK did have The Beatles. In the question “are The Beatles overrated or underrated?’, the answer is firmly UNDERRATED. I’m not a massive Beatles fan. I enjoy their music about as much as everyone else in the world, no more or less, but their impact is still under-appreciated.
“I’m more of a Stones guy,” say people who are trying to come off as cool. They say this because The Rolling Stones are far cooler than those Scoasers from Liverpool and are also legends in their own right. However, the Stones played other people's songs while everyone else played Beatles songs.
Here are five of my favorite Beatles Covers +1 that isn’t a favorite but proves my point
Come Together - Ike & Tina Turner
She Came In Through The Bathroom Window - Joe Cocker
Hey Jude - Wilson Pickett
We Can Work It Out - Stevie Wonder
Oh! Darling - Florence + The Machine
I Wanna Be Your Man - THE ROLLING STONES
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