Welcome to FinOps in Action! Join host, Taylor Houck, Each week, as he sits down with FinOps experts to explore the toughest challenges between FinOps and Engineering. This show is brought to you by PointFive - empowering teams to optimize cloud costs with deep detection and remediation tools that drive action.
FinOps in Action
Claim This Podcastby PointFive
5.0(9 reviews)
81 episodes
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Podcast Overview
Welcome to FinOps in Action! Join host, Taylor Houck, Each week, as he sits down with FinOps experts to explore the toughest challenges between FinOps and Engineering. This show is brought to you by PointFive - empowering teams to optimize cloud costs with deep detection and remediation tools that drive action.
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Publishing Since
1/14/2025
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Recent Episodes
July 23, 2026
Sales Strategy Meets Practitioner Reality ft. Sean Kennedy and Amanda Wagner | Ep #78
<p>What happens when you put the strategic and operational sides of FinOps in the same room?</p><p>In this episode of FinOps in Action, host Taylor Houck welcomes two guests for the first time on the show, Sean Kennedy, Senior Cloud FinOps Consultant, and Amanda Wagner, Cloud FinOps Consultant, both from Trace3. Sean focuses on presales strategy and partner enablement across Trace3's FinOps practice, while Amanda works directly with a portfolio of customers on the practitioner side. Together they unpack why FinOps never really finishes, how customer maturity changes the conversation, and what the AI cost landscape looks like right now.</p><p>Here’s what we talked about:</p><ul><li><strong>FinOps is a cycle, not a destination.</strong> There's no finish line, just an ongoing loop of informing, optimizing, and operating that adapts as engineering, pricing, and business needs change.</li><li><strong>Document your processes before you need them.</strong> Repeatable procedures for tagging, showback, and optimization reviews protect your FinOps program from falling apart when key people leave.</li><li><strong>Meet customers at their maturity level.</strong> Don't push budgeting and forecasting on a team that's still working on basic visibility; introduce concepts in bite-sized chunks as they're ready.</li><li><strong>The biggest wins often come from on-prem-to-cloud transitions.</strong> Companies migrating legacy infrastructure and mindsets tend to have the most untapped savings potential, partly because the human resistance to change is as big a factor as the technical work.</li><li><strong>Clarify what "AI spend" actually means before optimizing it.</strong> Seat-based licenses, hyperscaler AI services, GPU infrastructure, and token-based usage are all totally different cost problems that need different strategies.</li></ul><p>Chapters:</p><p>00:00 Welcome to the Show</p><p>00:51 Meet Sean and Amanda</p><p>01:51 Sean's Role at Trace3</p><p>02:41 Amanda's Practitioner Lens</p><p>03:18 Myth of Being Done</p><p>04:09 Mindset Shift From IT</p><p>05:05 FinOps as Org Adoption</p><p>06:15 Repeatable Processes Matter</p><p>07:09 Core FinOps Processes</p><p>08:12 Enterprise vs Commercial Needs</p><p>11:10 When Spend Forces FinOps</p><p>12:03 Start Early and Build Habits</p><p>14:36 Meeting Customers Where They Are</p><p>16:32 Who Gains the Most</p><p>23:18 AI Expands FinOps Scope</p><p>27:56 Forecasting and Optimizing AI</p><p>31:44 Closing and Personal Journeys</p><p><br> 🎧 Subscribe for more FinOps leadership conversations → <a href="https://www.finopsinaction.com/">https://www.finopsinaction.com/</a> </p><p>Quote of the Show:</p><ul><li>“"I think the myth is that FinOps is something that you finish, right? You don't ever arrive at FinOps." - Amanda Wagner</li></ul><p>Links:</p><ul><li>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda--wagner/">https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda--wagner/</a></li><li>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean~kennedy/">https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean~kennedy/</a></li><li>Website: <a href="https://www.trace3.com/">https://www.trace3.com/</a></li></ul><p>Ways to Tune In:</p><ul><li>Amazon Music: <a href="https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55">https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55</a> </li><li>Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808</a> </li><li>iHeart Radio: <a href="https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/">https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/</a> </li><li>Podchaser: <a href="https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339">https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339</a> </li><li>Spotify: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t">https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t</a> </li><li>Substack: <a href="https://finopsinaction.substack.com/">https://finopsinaction.substack.com/</a> </li><li>Transistor: <a href="http://finopsinaction.com">finopsinaction.com</a> </li><li>YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@PointFive_Inc">https://www.youtube.com/@PointFive_Inc</a> </li></ul>
July 16, 2026
Engineering Enterprise FinOps ft. Piotr Kuczmera | Ep # 77
<p>What if the biggest mistake your FinOps program makes is skipping the requirements phase entirely?</p><p>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?"</p><p>Piotr shares how a single report request from his manager five years ago turned into a full scale internal FinOps platform, a hub and spoke operating model across 15 to 20 business units, and a team built on the combination of FinOps practitioners and data engineers working side by side.</p><p>Here is what they covered: </p><ul><li><strong>Why FinOps is more than cost savings.</strong> Piotr explains that equating FinOps with cost optimization alone leads to failed implementations, and that starting with a clear requirements conversation, like a tailor fitting a suit to the right occasion, is what sets a practice up for long term success.<p></p></li><li><strong>How chargeback became the turning point.</strong> When ZF connected individual names to specific budgets and sent real invoices, something clicked. Engineers and budget holders stopped asking about aggregate project spend and started asking "why am I paying this much and how do I reduce it?"<p></p></li><li><strong>The case for building your own platform.</strong> ZF evaluated the major third party FinOps tools and walked away. Licensing costs, limited multi-cloud support, and a lack of flexibility in adapting to existing finance and procurement processes all pointed toward a homegrown solution built on native cloud tooling and a BI layer they already owned.<p></p></li><li><strong>The hub and spoke model for FinOps at scale.</strong> At the center sits a core team of FinOps consultants and data engineers. In each business unit, a nominated budget owner and a FinOps champion bridge the gap between central strategy and local execution.<p></p></li><li><strong>AI for FinOps, not just FinOps for AI.</strong> Piotr is most energized by how AI can automate repetitive FinOps workflows and take recommendations beyond basic CPU and memory parameters to consider commitment connections, usage patterns, and resource families all at once. He also sees FinOps as a function that should open doors for AI adoption, not slow it down.<p></p></li><li><strong>FinOps as connective tissue.</strong> Across financial colleagues, engineering teams, and business managers, Piotr sees FinOps as the function responsible for translating the right information to the right persona, not flooding finance with VM data, and not giving engineers a budget variance they cannot act on.</li></ul><p>Chapters:</p><p>00:00 What Every Company Gets Wrong About FinOps </p><p>01:27 Meet Piotr Kuczmera </p><p>02:14 FinOps Is Not Just Cost Savings </p><p>03:30 Building Trust Across Departments </p><p>05:00 The FinOps Team Structure at ZF Group </p><p>08:00 Hub and Spoke: Champions and Budget Owners </p><p>10:00 Scale and Cadence Across 15 to 20 Categories </p><p>12:00 Back to the Beginning: One Report at a Time </p><p>14:00 Build vs Buy: The Platform Decision </p><p>18:00 Why Ownership of Data Changes Everything </p><p>21:00 Chargeback as the Accountability Switch </p><p>23:00 Translating FinOps Across Personas </p><p>25:00 FinOps as Connective Tissue </p><p>26:00 AI for FinOps and FinOps for AI </p><p>29:00 Treating AI Spend Like Any Other Cloud Service </p><p>30:00 What the Well Tailored FinOps Suit Looks Like in One Year </p><p>31:00 From Math Degree to FinOps Leader </p><p>33:00 Advice for Early Career FinOps Professionals </p><p>34:00 Where to Find Piotr</p><p><br></p><p>Quote of the Show:<br>"Stay humble and don't be afraid of challenges." - Piotr Kuczmera</p><p>🎧 Subscribe for more FinOps leadership conversations:<a href="https://www.finopsinaction.com/"> https://www.finopsinaction.com/</a></p><p><br></p><p>Links:</p><ul><li>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/piotr-kuczmera-59b39712a/">https://www.linkedin.com/in/piotr-kuczmera-59b39712a/</a></li><li>Website: <a href="https://www.zf.com/usa_canada/en/home/home.html">https://www.zf.com/usa_canada/en/home/home.html</a></li></ul><p>Ways to Tune In:</p><ul><li>Amazon Music: <a href="https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55">https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55</a> </li><li>Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808</a> </li><li>iHeart Radio: <a href="https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/">https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/</a> </li><li>Podchaser: <a href="https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339">https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339</a> </li><li>Spotify: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t">https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t</a> </li><li>Substack: <a href="https://finopsinaction.substack.com/">https://finopsinaction.substack.com/</a> </li><li>Transistor: <a href="http://finopsinaction.com">finopsinaction.com</a> </li><li>YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@PointFive_Inc">https://www.youtube.com/@PointFive_Inc</a> </li></ul>
July 9, 2026
The Price of Cost Awareness ft. Ruby Agarwal | Ep #76
<p>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?</p><p>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 than perfect data, and how cost awareness becomes part of engineering culture rather than a one-time optimization project.</p><p>They also explore how AI is changing operational decision-making and why the future of FinOps will depend on balancing innovation with discipline.</p><p><strong>Takeaways:</strong></p><ul><li>Start with visibility, not spreadsheets of despair. Ruby's team didn't need perfect data to cut 75% of spend, they needed a one-slider view everyone could understand. Skip the 20 page report and focus your team's attention on the handful of buckets driving most of the cost.</li><li>Cost isn't the enemy, inefficiency is. Turning everything off would bring spending to zero, but that's not the goal. The goal is getting the same performance, reliability, and security for less, not gutting the services delivering value.</li><li>Build your COGS model before you write code. On Avaya Infinity, Ruby's team defined their cost model before a single line was written, and they publish and measure it every month. Bake cost discipline into the architecture from day one instead of cleaning up after launch.</li><li>Separate your AI innovation zone from your production zone. Let engineers experiment freely with the most powerful models while building, but production agents don't need the flashiest reasoning model, they need the cheapest one that gets the job done reliably.</li><li>The skills that carry your career aren't technical. Ruby calls systems thinking, structured decision-making, communication, and connection-building the real differentiators, not soft skills but critical skills. Investing in those early pays off longer than any single technology wave.</li></ul><p>Chapters:</p><p>00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro</p><p>01:25 The 75 Percent Story Setup</p><p>01:45 Project Context Multi Cloud</p><p>02:37 Cataloging Costs and Buckets</p><p>03:21 Quick Wins Labs Scheduling</p><p>04:15 Storage Cleanup and Tiering</p><p>04:30 Dashboards Make It Visible</p><p>05:44 Working With Developers</p><p>06:50 Culture Tools and Training</p><p>08:58 Cross Functional Momentum</p><p>10:29 FinOps From Day One</p><p>11:21 Avaya Infinity COGS Model</p><p>13:37 Who Owns Cost Decisions</p><p>15:28 Need Dedicated FinOps</p><p>18:00 80 20 Cost Focus</p><p>21:08 Cost Fear vs Cloud Value</p><p>23:04 Regulated Industry Constraints</p><p>26:38 AI Agents and Model Costs</p><p>32:53 Future of Operational Intelligence</p><p>35:30 Career Advice Beyond Tech</p><p>37:36 Giving Back and Mentoring</p><p>39:23 Closing Thanks and Wrap</p><p><br> 🎧 Subscribe for more FinOps leadership conversations → <a href="https://www.finopsinaction.com/">https://www.finopsinaction.com/</a> </p><p>Quote of the Show:</p><ul><li>“ Your first cloud cost bill will be dependent on what architectural decisions you have made for your projects.” - Ruby Agarwal </li></ul><p>Links:</p><ul><li>LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubyagarwal/</li><li>Website: https://www.avaya.com/en/</li></ul><p>Ways to Tune In:</p><ul><li>Amazon Music: <a href="https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55">https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55</a> </li><li>Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808</a> </li><li>iHeart Radio: <a href="https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/">https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/</a> </li><li>Podchaser: <a href="https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339">https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339</a> </li><li>Spotify: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t">https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t</a> </li><li>Substack: <a href="https://finopsinaction.substack.com/">https://finopsinaction.substack.com/</a> </li><li>Transistor: <a href="http://finopsinaction.com">finopsinaction.com</a> </li><li>YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@PointFive_Inc">https://www.youtube.com/@PointFive_Inc</a> </li></ul>
81 total episodes available
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