FinOps in Action

What if the biggest mistake your FinOps program makes is skipping the requirements phase entirely?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, host Taylor Houck sits down with Piotr Kuczmera, Head of FinOps at ZF Group, to unpack how he built a FinOps practice from scratch at a 150,000 person global enterprise, and why the first question every organization should ask is not "how do we cut costs" but "what exactly do we need?"

Piotr shares h...

What if the biggest cloud savings opportunity isn't hidden in your infrastructure, but in the decisions made before the first line of code is written?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, Taylor sits down with Ruby Agarwal, VP of Engineering at Avaya, whose responsibilities span engineering, DevOps, DevSecOps, CloudOps, and FinOps. Ruby shares how her team reduced cloud spend by 75% in just two months, why visibility matters more th...

What does agentic FinOps actually look like in practice, and how should practitioners start thinking about it?

Taylor Houck sits down with Pathik Sharma, Cloud Cost Optimization Lead at Google Cloud and Cofounder of their Cloud FinOps practice, to talk about how AI is closing the gap between knowing and doing in FinOps. Pathik shares how teams can hand off low risk tasks like tagging and labeling to AI agents while keeping humans in...

What if the best FinOps practitioners are the ones who never set out to be FinOps practitioners at all?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, host Taylor Houck sits down with Gerard Sanchez, Head of Enterprise Platforms and Cloud Technology at Resolution Life, to unpack what it actually looks like to build a cloud engineering, DevOps, and FinOps practice from absolute zero at a company that was only six months old when he joined. Ger...

What if the biggest driver of cloud waste isn't what shows up in your billing dashboard?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, Taylor sits down with Mike Jaco, who spent years at Mastercard running one of the most sophisticated hybrid cost programs in enterprise technology. A unified TBM and FinOps practice covering a multi-billion dollar technology budget, on-prem and public cloud, under a single common taxonomy.

Mike's core belief: ...

What if the biggest cost problem in your organization never shows up on your cloud bill?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, host Taylor Houck sits down with Kumar Singirikonda, Director of DevOps Engineering at Toyota Financial Services, FinOps Foundation board member, and author of the DevOps Automation Cookbook. Kumar makes the case that FinOps as we know it is only the first chapter, and the next chapter belongs to self-healing...

Are "bad tagging" and "unused resources" really the problem, or just the symptoms of a bigger one?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with senior FinOps manager Chitra Jadhav to explore what it truly takes to build a FinOps practice that lasts not just one that generates a list of recommendations nobody acts on.

Drawing on eight years of building FinOps programs from the ground up across six or more organizations, Chitra...

What if your biggest cloud inefficiency isn’t how much you’re using, but how long your workloads are running?

In this special episode of FinOps in Action, PointFive’s Co-Founder and CPO, Gal Ben David sits down with Matan Ben-Ishay, leading FP&A, Engineering, and Cloud Infrastructure at Credit Karma, to unpack a real world cloud efficiency discovery that led to tens of millions of dollars in savings without red...

How do you make cloud data costs transparent and actionable when thousands of users share the same platform?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with Oliver Milke from TD, who shares how he built a Data FinOps practice from the ground up inside a large financial institution, starting as a team of one and scaling into a dedicated function.

Coming from a background in economics and finance, Oliver offers a unique perspectiv...

Are “idle resources” really the problem, or just the easiest one to fix?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with cloud architect and engineer Shailaja Beeram to explore a fundamentally different perspective: cost inefficiencies don’t start in the billing file, but in architectural decisions made long before deployment.

Drawing on over 15 years of experience across AWS, Azure, and GCP, Shailaja explains ...

Are you actually measuring the value of your cloud spend or just tracking the cost?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with Kevin Mueller, Principal Architect of Cloud FinOps at Presidio, to unpack one of the most talked-about and most misunderstood concepts in FinOps: unit economics.

With over 20 years of experience spanning software engineering, AWS SaaS architecture, and cloud financial management, Kevin shares a grou...

Why do cloud costs stay high even after you build all the right dashboards?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with Cristian Magherusan-Stanciu, Founder and Cloud Optimization Specialist at Leaner Cloud. With over 20 years in systems engineering and a background at Nokia, HERE Technologies, and AWS, Cristian built AutoSpotting, an open source tool that has helped more than 10,000 customers save money on EC2.

Cristian sha...

Why do so many FinOps practitioners miss the biggest savings opportunities, and what does getting technical have to do with it?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with Nick Sudarikov, Finance Director of Technology Operations at InvestCloud, to break down how a background in finance and capital markets can actually make you a sharper, more effective FinOps practitioner.

Nick shares how he went from investment banker ...

Why are your cloud costs so high and what actually fixes them?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with Jason Ward, Lead FinOps Practitioner at C.H. Robinson, to break down how to take control of cloud spend without slowing down engineering.

Jason shares how he went from mechanic to FinOps leader, built a FinOps function from scratch, and uncovered massive savings, including a 90% cost reduction from a single optimiza...

What does it really take to turn cloud cost chaos into a sustainable FinOps practice, and why do most organizations get it wrong from the start?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with Loic Fournier, Senior Technical Account Manager at AWS and 2025 AWS Technical Field Community Legend. With over 25 years in technology, from mainframes to modern cloud, Loic has become one of the most recognized voices in AWS cost optimiz...

Why does cloud cost optimization only start after it’s already too late?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with Jai Padmanabhan, who shares why cloud cost is no longer just a finance concern; it’s a core responsibility for engineering teams. Drawing on decades of experience leading platforms in complex and regulated environments, Jai explains how the shift to the cloud fundamentally changed how organization...

If you can’t see where your cloud spend is going, how can you possibly control it?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with Stijn Depril, FinOps Architect at Euroclear and Co-Founder of Costra. He shares why cloud visibility is the starting point for any successful FinOps practice. Drawing on decades of experience in infrastructure and cloud architecture, he explains how many organizations rushed into the cloud wit...

How do you move from chasing $15 cloud savings to building a scalable FinOps program that actually drives impact?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with Chandan Bukkapatnam, Senior Cloud FinOps Analyst at Procore Technologies, to unpack what it really takes to mature a FinOps practice from tactical cost-cutting to strategic influence.

Chandan shares how he intentionally built his career at the intersection of cloud ...

What if the biggest mistake new FinOps teams make isn’t missing savings, but executing them too soon?

In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with Henrique Amorim, Business Analyst and FinOps Specialist at Crayon. He shares an honest look at what it really takes to build a successful FinOps practice. From resisting the urge to immediately slash costs to navigating engineering relationships and preparing for the AI-driv...