Aussie enterprises make FinOps, operationalising cloud top cloud priorities

Australian enterprises have been looking to implement a FinOps practice for their cloud environments as they look to rein in costs amid the current economic slowdown, according to a report from analysts Forrester.

In its The State of Cloud in Australia and New Zealand report for 2023, Forrester said senior Australian enterprise cloud decision-makers report that their organisations are spending an average of close to US$14 million on public cloud over the past 12 months, which has prompted calls to reduce costs.

Forrester said that rather than just turning to tools, enterprises are looking to implement a FinOps practice to build in collaboration, hold users accountable for spend decisions and provide transparency on spend initiatives across the organisation.

“While the tech downturn isn’t hitting local firms as much as onshore multinationals, Australian firms still want the most out of FinOps — even as layoffs by big tech firms cool the labour market,” the report read.

“For example, an Australian food retailer uses Apptio to automate its financial management and month-end process, has stopped using spreadsheets, and has improved communication between business units.”

The report also found that 94 percent of Australian cloud decision-makers said they are using hybrid cloud environments, while 95 percent said they use multiple public clouds. Around 54 percent meanwhile use internal private cloud as their primary cloud platform.

Modernisation is also at the forefront for Australian cloud decision makers, with 53 percent of them expecting their organisations to prioritise modernisation with cloud and new computing architectures over the next 12 months.

Some are using a mix of tools like Kubernetes, cloud-native services, AI and machine learning to rework apps, and approaches to modernise their code like strangler patterns, replatforming or integration.

Cloud native is also becoming the new normal in Australia, with technologies like containers, serverless or service mesh now at the core of cloud strategies, instead of just as an addendum.

Forrester found 67 percent of Australian enterprise cloud decision-makers say their organisation is adopting use containers on bare-metal infrastructure, on-premises, or in public cloud.

Government is also a dominant force across both Australian and New Zealand cloud adoption, with the latter the first to to the table with a cloud-first government policy in 2012 and Australia following suit in 2015.