Microsoft integrates GenAI into FinOps tooling

Interview with Srivatsan Kidambi, VP of Engineering at Microsoft.

Interview with Cyril Belikoff, VP of Microsoft Azure & Industry Clouds.

Key Insight: Microsoft integrates GenAI into FinOps tooling to help all stakeholders get insights from cost and usage data. Microsoft is also focused on sustainability initiatives to bring carbon and cost data together.

At FinOps X in San Diego in June 2024, Rob Martin, Principal at the FinOps Foundation, sat down with Srivatsan Kidambi, VP of Engineering at Microsoft, and then with Cyril Belikoff, VP of Microsoft Azure & Industry Clouds, to ask what they each think the Future of FinOps will look like.

Microsoft is investing heavily in sustainability initiatives. In addition to reducing carbon emissions, Srivatsan noted that a focus on sustainability improves employee morale. Cost and carbon go hand-in-hand, so Microsoft wants to enable customers to optimize both together.

Microsoft is also investing in FOCUS. Srivatsan admitted that he was initially skeptical of FOCUS’s goal to bring all the cloud providers together, but it has been a “phenomenal journey” and he is “super thankful to the Foundation for getting us where we are.” Looking ahead, Srivatsan says there is room for FOCUS to expand beyond consumption-based spending to cover less variable costs like licenses to get to the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Microsoft is betting on AI – both classic Machine Learning and newer Generative AI – to drive the next revolutions in business. Their customers’ technology landscapes are continuously evolving, and AI enables the agility needed to meet rapidly-changing consumer needs. Microsoft has integrated CoPilot with Azure to bring GenAI to FinOps (i.e., AI for FinOps).

FinOps for AI

Cyril believes that “This AI moment was made for FinOps. It’s an amazing opportunity for all of us…to keep the agility but to bring some sanity.” FinOps can help measure the value of AI investments in the same way it helps to measure the value of cloud investments. (See Applying FinOps to GenAI.) FinOps Practitioners should bring their experiences adopting cloud to their AI colleagues so businesses do not make the same mistakes with AI that were made with cloud investments early on.

AI has the potential to transform the way we access, manage, and interact with data, but Cyril reminds us that it’s important to make a business case about what to use AI for. “AI has changed the velocity by a factor of 10” but decisions about using AI should be made in the context of ROI, and so Microsoft is helping customers look at their costs in the context of the value these investments deliver. Organizations are hungry to use this new technology at any cost, which can lead to an overcorrection and tightening of usage down the road. Microsoft encourages customers to take a measured approach, applying FinOps to AI early on to avoid this boom and bust cycle.