Intelligent automation technologies continue to evolve, most recently through improved insights and management of cloud resources.
Application resource management solutions are integrated with automation solutions for their focus on application performance, compliance, and cost reduction. All have become necessary components for DevOps teams looking to improve efficiency in the cloud.
Businesses looking to manage unmanageable cloud costs are quickly prioritizing FinOps initiatives. This emerging technology along with AIOps tools, observability, and remediation capabilities make it a relevant technology to watch within the automation segment. Solutions will emerge in the form of application resource management or resource utilization, likely integrated into future evolutions of monitoring and tracking offerings.
Cloud cost concerns have been rising for several years, but the topic has been formalized through the involvement of the standards body community. Two years ago, the Linux Foundation formed the FinOps Foundation to increase awareness and best practices in cloud financial management. The greatest value of FinOps is to increase software engineers’ awareness of how to consider cost optimization when mapping new application architectures early in the design phase.
Getting buy-in from all members of the software team is easier said than done, however, because costs are not their only concern. According to CNCF’s State of FinOps2022 survey focused on FinOps challenges, 30% of those surveyed report that their organization’s biggest challenge is getting engineers to take a more active role in cost optimization.
Cloud cost awareness
A surge of awareness is building around application resource management solutions. For example, IBM’s recent acquisition of Turbonomic will bring IBM Cloud and OpenShift cost reduction methods by helping to optimize the deployment of IT resources throughout the dev/test/production process. Other players in this space include Microsoft Azure platform management tools, ServiceNow, Apptio, and Platform9 among others.
At the same time, surveillance solutions are proving to be a complementary technology for providing proactive incident resolution, remediation, and prevention. Vendors moving into this space include Dynatrace, VMware vRealize, AppDynamics and Amazon CloudWatch among others. Interesting start-ups include Honeycomb, Lightstep, and Chronosphere. Ultimately, these technologies will be integrated into more comprehensive DevOps platforms along with intelligent automation. The industry will see increasing moves by organizations to prioritize FinOps initiatives, marking the next pragmatic phase for providing better insights and best practices into how financial resources are allocated, used, and managed. resources.