Jennifer Hays
Fidelity Investments
Date: February 5, 2024 Video: 5 mins
Key Insight: Assuring Finance leaders that cloud providers are committed to optimizing (and reducing) the cost of cloud services can help give executives confidence to approve cloud migration and usage.
Fidelity is 5 years into their FinOps journey and has been successful with a hub-and-spoke model for FinOps teams. But gaining the freedom for each business unit to manage their own FinOps practice requires building trust between Finance and Engineering departments.
An early, memorable moment for Jennifer, who is Head of Engineering Excellence, was a conversation with Fidelity’s head of Finance, who explained that she has a personal fiduciary responsibility to ensure the company is spending wisely. This fiduciary responsibility makes cloud migration scary, as costs in the cloud are incurred by engineers (with less control held by executives). Jennifer was able to show that cloud service providers are committed to lowering costs, and there are more opportunities for cost optimization in the cloud than there are with on-premise infrastructure. Showing this cleared the way for Fidelity’s cloud migration.
