FinOps (financial operations)

FinOps is an operational framework to manage and optimise cloud spending. For FinOps, we follow the FinOps foundation framework.

This framework aims to:

get value out of using cloud

give you timely data to make financial and technical decisions

create financial accountability through collaboration between engineering, finance and business teams

The framework uses ‘domains’. Domains are the 'outcomes' of FinOps practices.

The domains aim to help you:

understand usage and cost

quantify business value

optimise usage and cost

FinOps private beta

We’re currently running a FinOps private beta. It focuses on the domain about understanding cost and usage. We’ve invited a selection of teams or organisations to join this private beta.

Teams on the private beta

If you’re part of the private beta, we’ll give you access to your cloud workload data through a dashboard in Power BI. You’ll then be able to enter and track your budget against the data.

You’ll also get support from our FinOps team.

The private beta dashboard is for leadership and operations roles. We’ll continue to work on expanding the service offering for other roles and personas. We'll let you know when more functionality is available.

How to access to your dashboard

You'll access your dashboard on PowerBI. There are different dashboards for AWS and Azure customers:

When you open PowerBI in your browser, you'll be given the option to "pick an account to sign in with". You should pick the email address with "cirrus" in it.

This will then ask you to verify your gov.scot email address. To do this you'll need to download the Okta verify app.

You’ll only see the data that you’d usually have access to in your cloud environments. If you want to see more data, you need to change permissions through your Okta groups.

If you're an AWS customer, you can download your data to create a cost and usage report. You can read about how to do this on the AWS docs website.