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The IT Matters Podcast is about IT matters and matters pertaining to IT.In this episode of IT Matters, host Aaron Bock interviews Will Friedrich, Director of Strategy and Consulting at Experis.Conversation Highlights: Will explains how he began working with the cloud and how the cloud has evolved over the past two decades (4:08)Why companies should consider adopting the cloud (8:15)The general use cases for the cloud (13:08)What the cloud actually is, and how business leaders should look...
The IT Matters Podcast is about IT matters and matters pertaining to IT.
In this episode of IT Matters, host Aaron Bock interviews Will Friedrich, Director of Strategy and Consulting at Experis.
Conversation Highlights:
Resources Mentioned:
About Will Friedrich:
Will Friedrich is the VP of IT Solutions with Experis, a global leader in IT professional resourcing and managed services. For the past 17 years, he has forged a career in technology, serving and leading in various PMO functions as well as product marketing, software portfolio delivery, IT infrastructure, cloud, and tech business management consulting functions. Will is a husband, proud father of two fantastic kids, and loves golfing, surfing, and college football Saturdays.
Welcome to the Opkalla IT Matters Podcast, where we discuss the important matters within IT as well as the importance of IT across different industries and responsibilities.
About Opkalla:
Opkalla helps their clients navigate the confusion in the technology marketplace and choose the technology solutions that are right for their business. They work alongside IT teams to design, procure, implement and support the most complex IT solutions without an agenda or technology bias. Opkalla was founded around the belief that IT professionals deserve better, and is guided by their core values: trust, transparency and speed. For more information, visit https://opkalla.com/ or follow them on LinkedIn.
Narrator: Welcome to the IT
Matters podcast, where we
explore why it matters and
matters pertaining to it. Here's
your host, Aaron Bach.
Aaron Bock: Welcome again to the
IT Matters podcast. As you
heard, I'm your host, Aaron
Bock, and super excited about
this episode today, I hope you
guys have been doing well, we
are talking to Will Friedrich,
who is the Director of Strategy
and Consulting at Experis. Will
is here in Charlotte. And I'm
gonna let him introduce himself
here in a second. But today's
gonna be a really interesting
conversation. We've been talking
a lot about general IT trends,
we're gonna get a little bit
deeper today and where Will
specializes, which is cloud fin
ops and fin ops. What is that?
How does it affect us? Very
excited about this episode
today, because I think a lot of
you out there, whether you're in
IT or in a finance or other
function, know about the cloud
have heard about the cloud?
There's a lot that we do know,
and there's a lot we don't know.
And I think that what Will does
is a great general practice that
we all need to be aware of. So
before we get too deep, Will I
will turn it over to you. Thanks
for joining the show. Do you
want to tell the listeners a
little bit about yourself?
Will Friedrich: Yeah, sure.
Thanks, Aaron. Thanks for having
me. Yeah. So again, Will
Frederick like you mentioned
Director of Strategy and
Consulting for Experis. Experis
is a IT staffing and consulting
services and solutions provider,
part of the Manpower brand was
previously with ettain Group and
we were recently acquired by
Manpower and integrated with
Experis so it's been a whirlwind
last few months with integration
and extremely busy and yeah, you
know, 17 year career for me thus
far in technology, I've had
various roles within PMO
functions, product leadership, a
lot of software delivery, which,
you know, curtailed into Agile
Delivery and DevOps, those types
of things. Spent some time in IT
services and infrastructure
leadership and cloud and some
TBM consulting. On the personal
side, the husband proud father
of two terrific kids and love to
surf, play golf, you know, very
young sports, all of that and
love, you know, college
football, so college football
Saturday's around the corner and
can't wait for that.
Aaron Bock: Yeah, absolutely.
Before the show, Will was
telling me because I knew he was
a Georgia fan. So I assumed the
whole family was but it sounds
like there's a little bit of
conflict in the household.
Will Friedrich: Yeah, yeah, half
the family. So my side, Georgia
Bulldogs. I went to College of
Charleston, so no football,
we're still undefeated. My
wife's there, Buckeyes. So take
it or leave it. And, and my son,
he inexplicably found Clemson on
his own. I think as he was
coming into football, they won
the national championship in
2018. Trevor Lawrence, Tigers,
Dabo, the energy, the orange, I
think he just gravitated towards
it. So he's a Clemson fan. He's
the black sheep in the college
football dynamic.
Aaron Bock: Yeah, maybe they'll
all be at one conference in
order to you never know. Well,
thank you for joining. And I
guess before we get started,
because you just mentioned about
four acronyms that I think maybe
some listeners might not know.
So you said TBM? Can you can you
just define TBM for the
listeners just so they get a
little bit more your background?
Will Friedrich: Sure. So that's
technology business management,
which is a larger governing
model for IT and business
structure organizations that are
focused on their IT operations,
cloud thin ups, it becomes part
of that as companies begin to
adopt the cloud more and more.
PMO was another one, you know,
project and program management
office. So in a lot of
instances, and in my experience,
it's been helping to lead a
shared service across an
enterprise where we help to
manage and run various
technology projects from IT
operations, systems, support
upgrades, app dev, all of those
types of things.
Aaron Bock: Great. So you said
seven, you've had a 17 year
career in IT or around IT. And
now cloud fin ops is kind of a
specialty. But Cloud has not
really been around for 17 years
in the in the mass media or in
mass companies. So when did you
start dealing with the cloud
working with the cloud become
interested in the cloud? How did
it start? Just give a little
more details there?
Will Friedrich: Sure. For me,
personally, in my career, it
started around 2015 2016. I was
working for an IT integrator,
based in Charlotte and our data
center practice and our security
practice started to get into
Cisco's Software Defined
Networking offering which was
cloud based and they were
starting to acquire different
private cloud platforms to help
enable that kind of technology.
And the fin ops piece came much,
much later. I mean, as a cost
management discipline for the
cloud, it's really, I would say,
three years old, in terms of a
real concentrated focus. Cloud
providers services have been
around in the case of Amazon,
AWS, as early as 2006. But then
focusing on the cost impact of
that as a discipline, you know,
2018 2019, around that
timeframe. So there's roughly a
12 year gap between when the
capabilities were available,
migrations really started to
move in that direction. And
then, you know, a decade later,
people are starting to realize
that there is a need to focus on
the cost impact,
Aaron Bock: what is the reason
you think, for the 12 year gap
for people started becoming
interested in in fin ops, and
really cost optimization of the
cloud?
Will Friedrich: Yeah, and I
think from the providers, you
know, taking the big three, for
example, you know, across AWS
and Azure GCP, you know, within
their, their platforms, they've
had cost management tools to
various degrees, with its cost
Explorer for AWS, the cost
manager piece, the cost
management portal for Azure. And
so but that's kind of been in a
in a vacuum, what the cloud fin
ops discipline and through the
fin ops foundation is attempting
to do is say, there's a much
more intentional and consistent
orchestration of different
stakeholders across an
organization that should be
paying attention to this, as
opposed to engineers pushing a
button and making a purchase in
a vacuum. And as opposed to the
finance and back office
function, looking at their
reporting in a vacuum. And if
these two groups aren't talking,
you're still going to get
surprised when you have over
provisioning that leads to cost
overruns, you overcommit your
vacancies too high, you know,
all those types of things. So I
really think that this, this
emergence of different
stakeholder groups that
traditionally don't interact
with each other, now need to
come together to keep this
working consistently. And to
mature, this focus is really
important. And two of those
stakeholder groups are, you
couldn't be further apart in
terms of where traditional IT
was with a central procurement
group and those types of things
to where it is now, you know,
highly distributed, meaning the
finance and back office team now
working with engineering, and
now working with IT ops, and so
I think, back to your question
about why did it take so long, I
think it's because it's this
recognition of there are groups
of people that that, within a
corporate culture need to come
together and start working
together in a different way.
It's not as simple as just
having, you know, a basic cost
management capability and inside
of the inside of the tool,
Aaron Bock: well, and then I
guess, you know, what we see
with our customers is that we've
got, you know, if you look at
the bell curve of technology,
you've got customers who are
cutting edge, they're way ahead.
They were born in the cloud,
they're already on all the, you
know, cloud services, native,
etc. And then you've got the
traditional, you know, we're in
the southeast where there's a
lot of manufacturing,
traditional folks, that haven't
really even kind of said yes to
the cloud yet. So I think my
prediction is probably part of
that reason is that you still
don't have a 100% adoption in
the cloud, if you, you know,
we're getting closer to more
people accepting it fully. But
my question for you would be,
let's go back to, before we get
into really deep into Cloud fin
ops, and, and that the
collaboration between
departments, I think we hear a
lot, you know, from like a CFO
or CEO, like, why, why change?
Why go to the cloud? What are
the benefits? So maybe speak to
that? You know, for those folks
that are listening, that are not
on the cloud? Or we're very
little on the cloud? Like, why
should they even consider it?
Why are all these big companies
and why is there so much
emphasis on going to the cloud?
Will Friedrich: I think the
emphasis for going to the cloud
has been this momentum of the
architectures of software have
Aaron Bock: Do you think that
was sped up because of COVID. Or
changed dramatically over the
last several years. And so in
terms of companies undertaking a
digital first strategy, you
know, you hear about digital
transformation, those types of
buzzwords, the underlying
principle of software
development in that pursuit is
service oriented architecture,
right, highly distributed. And
anything you could go so far as
to say, you know, the
microservices and being able to
develop with with those types of
that type of architecture, to
support that you need a highly
distributed architecture as code
architecture as a service to
facilitate that. So your
computer, your storage, and
networking resources have to
adapt to that type of
application. And so I think
that's one of the one of the
main reasons for for moving to
the cloud. The other is the
performance that the cloud
providers can can provide scale
infinitely faster than you can
purchase new gear, refresh your
hardware, and you're seeing the
impacts of companies believing
that notion, the annual growth
rate for a cloud consumption,
and it's really, when I say
cloud consumption, I'm talking
about infrastructure as a
service and platform as a
service. There's various product
segments, but but those two main
ones kind of driving things at
the top, it's growing at a 14,
15% annual growth rate clip, and
that number alone doesn't really
mean much. But when you put it
in context, and you compare it
to an annual growth rate with
traditional IT gear, you know,
that's growing at about 1.3%.
So, and at some point, and some
some suggests there was an
article in, I think, ZDNet,
through the IDC research, they
took out an article that said,
you know, for the first time
ever, the the forecasted spin
for for cloud services, you
know, shared services is going
to eclipse traditional IT for
the first time in real dollars.
So you're starting to see that
do you think that that was
happening already? And COVID
just Is it coincidence that
people became more distributed?
Will Friedrich: Well, it was
happening before. COVID
certainly had an impact, but it
was more than just COVID. At the
time, there was you can imagine
a lot of the cloud providers,
their sales forces, their
reseller channels, their partner
groups really began to push
cloud services, which is good
because the performance, it is
in some respects, a better
performing IT infrastructure
than what you're using on prem
it provided that your use cases
aligned with what you need it
for, well, these groups began to
really push that and so
companies got caught up in it.
And the way that you provision
cloud services is completely
different than the way that you
do it on on prem. And a lot of
companies got caught up in the
just like for like matching,
whatever we're doing on prem,
Let's replicate that in the
cloud, we're simply just going
to lift and shift it, and they
over provisioned. And then on
top of that, they started
looking at all the discounts
they could achieve, if they
commit to certain resources in
advance, commit to certain
terms. And so then they over
commit, so now you're burning
the candle at both ends, you
don't have the right
architecture in the cloud,
you're overpaying for your
prepaid service, you're not
using it the way that you
purchased it. And so now you
have a mismatch. And then they
get their cloud bills. And
they're huge. And they don't
know why. And in a lot of cases,
they don't know where this is
coming from. So I think that
that's the cloud adoption has
really accelerated, but there
was kind of this synthetic
business driver that got people
kind of backwards. And now, you
know, you read about CIOs doing
the unthinkable there, they're
moving back, they're taking
things back out and building,
you know, on prem data centers,
and investing more in that
because they either migrated
inappropriately did it too soon,
too fast too much. And they
didn't really give themselves
the right ROI window based on
the level of their investment.
So they they invest. And the
level of investment probably
needed a five to seven year ROI
window. And they've got a two
year horizon and it doesn't
match. And they're, they're
moving back.
Aaron Bock: So let's come back
to that, because we've seen some
of it. And I'm interested to
hear your perspective. Let's go
back to the you know, maybe it's
the CFO or the CEO who goes to a
conference or hears this or is
hearing it from others, you need
to be considering the cloud, you
said something just there.
That's really important, if you
have the right use cases. So
like if you're talking to that
CFO who's not sure because
they're not as intimate with it,
as you know, an IT director or
CIO or someone like that. What
are the general use cases for
cloud at this point? And then I
would ask you like, what advice
would you give them to start,
like figuring out well, how do
we go to the cloud? Is it 100%?
Like, what percentage is the
right percentage for us?
Will Friedrich: Yeah, I think
the big thing is how much of
your business is being driven by
a technology experience that
that needs to be readily
available? So you're you're
talking about these hybrid use
cases, for service oriented
infrastructure. It's a lot of
custom when mobile application
development, and how much do you
need that performance to be at
its peak, that doesn't mean peak
usage, and you're maximizing the
CPU that you're that you're
trying to drive, but it's how
much of your business is really
innovation through through
software? I think those make
easier candidates to justify
migrating because you're gonna
have a hard time supporting that
software innovation and
supporting your application
development teams long term, if
you're limiting them with just
what you've been able to
purchase in a one or three year
cycle in an on prem data center.
Aaron Bock: Can you give an
example like you can be any
company in the world? You know,
probably probably one that
people have heard of, like, what
would be an example of someone
who's innovating through
software in your eyes? Like how
are they doing that? Like just
so that our listeners if they're
not as if they're not as exposed
to this concept? They understand
it?
Will Friedrich: Yeah, I think
SAAS companies may make really
good that software as a service
companies make good candidates
for this. They're not the only
ones. I mean, huge enterprises
that are in all kinds of
industries segments are moving
to the cloud, and rightfully so
that they're moving all their
production workloads, their
websites, all their traffic to
the cloud. But I the the
example, I always use is the
Netflix model, but it's not
relegated to just companies like
Netflix anymore. You know,
almost every company that we
deal with, is building software
and enabling technology inside
of their four walls, just like
Netflix would that they're
building services. They're
they're building software
themselves. And they're
investing in their application
development, as opposed to
simply just outsourcing it and
says, Oh, well, that company
developed our website, they
built this app, I don't really
know, you know, we really own
the code and that sort of thing.
So I think Netflix is a great
example. It's that software as a
service, and the underlying
infrastructure that supports
that is coming from coming from
the cloud.
Aaron Bock: I think that's a
really good example. And I
think, if I remember, and I
can't cite the source, but
Netflix was one of the largest
cloud spends in like one of the
last couple years, I forget
which cloud they're in, but
their their cloud spend was
enormous, but they could show an
ROI because of all of the other
factors that they don't have to
deal with with traditional
infrastructure. As we look
forward on this podcast, we talk
a lot about trends, we talk a
lot about what's happening. So I
would say the cloud has been a
trend for I don't know, probably
since 2015. Or before that, you
know, you keep hearing about it.
You go to Gartner Seminars, you
go to different things and
everyone's cloud cloud cloud.
2022, I would say when we hear
the cloud, think of
hyperscalers, like, define the
cloud, like what is it is just
the hyperscalers? Is it? Is it
you're you're putting
infrastructures of service and
you know, local colo that's
offering it like what is cloud
in your eyes? And what the way a
CFO or CIO should look at it?
Will Friedrich: Yeah. That's one
of the interesting things about
the cloud now is that there are
1000s of service use available
across different providers to do
different things. But by and
large, if you're talking about
infrastructure as a service,
you're talking about compute
storage, and networking. And
then platform as a service,
you're talking about resources
that are packaged together
either for you've got security
monitoring, you've got
telemetry, monitoring, you've
got certainly containers, right.
So you're, you're deploying
containers, and positioning your
service oriented applications
through through containers. And
that's a performance scalable,
being able to have a highly
distributed model to have
software distributed in that
fashion. So you have all those
components. And then you have
all kinds of purchasing options,
pricing models and alternatives
that you're evaluating to figure
out, well, given that that's my
menu, what's the best way to
actually put this into
production. 1000s of use cases,
all dependent on what you're
trying to get out of the
application. But that's really
where cloud thin ops can help
because that discipline is
there's whether it's a central
team, or distributed segment
teams that are working with
product groups, and helping
bridge the gap between finance
and engineering, to help them
understand that if the
engineering team is validating
that this is the architecture
they're going with, and these
are the resources they've
selected, let's make sure that
they've got the right mix. And
let's make sure that we're
making the right purchases to
give them the infrastructure
that they need. It's really
taking all the capabilities you
associated with your on prem
data center, and having somebody
else provide it, you just have
to be much smarter, and much
more deliberate about how you
can consume it. Because it's not
the water cooler that gets
delivered to your office every
month. It's a sprinkler system
that if you don't turn it off,
the bill keeps running. So it's
a completely different metered
billing model.
Aaron Bock: That's a great
analogy for for, I guess, for
the listeners, let's talk a
little bit about specifically
like what you do now for
Experis, like when people engage
you like, because I think what
we what I want to do is define
cloud fin ops, in the sense of
like, what is that for an
organization? Is it a
department? Is it a role under
finance? Is it a role in IT? You
do it as a consultant, like so
when would a customer engage you
and maybe if you can share, you
don't want to share names, but
share an example or a story
about when you've come into a
customer? And it's a mess, or,
they very much need what you do
explain that for our listeners.
Will Friedrich: Yeah, sure. So a
couple of things. One, just in
terms of the term cloud fin ops,
so the reason why I keep putting
cloud in front of that the
organizations that are governing
this, they generally don't they
call it thin ops, in
practicality and then working
with customers. One of the
problems that presents is that
fin ops in general refers to a
collection of financial
operations that a business might
undertake. So separate from that
general term, thin ops, the way
that these organizations are
using it for the cloud is really
a combination of you know, Fin
coming from financial
management. And then the ops
piece coming from a combination
of DevOps and data ops
enablement, that's used to
actually bring financial
management best practices for
the cloud to life. So there is
an engineering discipline within
this. But really, when when we
engage customers, when we engage
them in this discipline on
different levels, from an
Experis perspective, we have
consulting services in that we
can help organizations with
maturity assessments, helping
them to look at, you know,
stakeholder interviewing, and an
environment discovery, we can
help them with baselining, their
their KPIs, and their OKRs. And
all the metrics that you would
use to drive proficiency in
trying to get better at managing
and even getting to a certain
point where you're optimizing
Cloud Spin. And then we help
organizations build teams. So
the notion of the last couple of
years, it's come to light as
this, this notion of the fin ops
team was kind of like an agile
delivery pod. But this group is
central, it's usually within the
CIOs purview, sometimes
reporting up to a kind of a
combined function between CIO
and CFO. And it works with
different stakeholder groups.
And they're really the air
traffic control function within
this organization to make sure
that, you know, as you're
developing processes, and as
you're developing workflows, and
then as you're applying
automation to those processes to
get better about reviewing
reports, making real time
decisions on Cloud Spin, and
being able to drive certain
operations metrics, they're
there to make sure that those
groups keep the same autonomy,
like particularly on the
engineering side that they've
worked so hard to achieve
through agile and Kanban. All
those types of delivery models,
they want to keep that autonomy,
they just want to increase the
awareness and the impact of what
they do, what impact does that
have on the business? What
impact does that have on what
the finance procurement and back
office groups now have to deal
with as a result of what they're
doing for for resource
purchasing. And so it's an
orchestration of different
groups, that all are trying to
do the right thing. By managing
cloud cost, they're just each
doing it in a vacuum, and not
communicating. So it's really a
team that facilitates so when
when clients come to us, we're
really helping them to do just
that. In a lot of instances,
they're past the point of
determining whether or not the
cloud is for them. They're in
the throes of a migration plan,
where they need to have a
concerted effort at looking at
cost management, or they have a
lot of applications that are
born in the cloud, they're
operating post migration, but
there's still that that
consistent focus on needing to
achieve cost management, you
have to make sure that these
things aren't, are wildly out of
control, I think I saw that
cloud as an enterprise level of
expense, in many instances is
second only to payroll. So if
you're not paying attention to
that, it can get wildly out of
control. And so there is there
is a need. And there's an
associated ROI with investing in
a a fin ops, consulting, service
and assessment to help you
understand where you are today.
And where you need to get to.
And there's also an ROI for
having a team and also staffing
full time dedicated roles that
aren't just doing fin ops on the
side, while they're doing other
things, but there's a real push
to have dedicated fin ops
practitioners in your
organization, that are doing
these types of things as a full
time job. So we help customers
in all three of those areas. And
one of the examples I you know,
to your to your point without
naming names, although based on
where we got them to, they
probably wouldn't mind name
dropping, but but I won't. It
was a organization that that
used Azure, and they got caught
up in in the all too common.
Well, we just moved, we just we
just shifted because that's when
we work with a vendor as what we
decided to do. And it was really
a decision made in a vacuum that
really required a lot of
analysis, that that just didn't
happen. You doing it right, the
first time will save you so much
pain later in in trying to put
out fires on the backend. So
they lifted and shifted. And
they did some of the things that
I alluded to earlier, they, they
just simply replicated from a VM
perspective, what they had,
which they didn't need to the
cloud has gotten much better
giving you more than what you
would generally associate the on
prem equivalent, so they had too
much. And then they put too many
prepaid commitments. So one of
the things you can do is that
you can get a discount above and
beyond an on demand service rate
that a cloud provider might give
you for a certain service, let's
say a compute instance. And if
you commit to that in advance,
you can achieve a certain
discount, and that's dependent
on your ability to make sure
that you actually use the
commitment for what you
purchased it for and many
organizations don't or they
purchase for A three year term
and in their environment, their
usage, their their designs and
things change, their
infrastructure needs change. And
then what happens is they've
already purchased the
commitment. And now they're back
to consuming the on demand rate
once that configuration is a
mismatch, or or they're beyond
term.
Aaron Bock: We're actually seems
a little tangent, but like what
we're seeing, like in the
infrastructure space and the
cloud, one of the software's or
technologies that seems to be
popping up more and more as like
a trend is the reserved
instance, and whatever it's
called for each cloud, but like
the, you know, basically prepaid
usage or the reserved instance,
we're seeing, basically, the
ability for tech software, you
can put a software on there
where you can actually sell off
instances you might not use that
you initially reserved, and
basically broker those so that
you're right sizing because, to
your point, so many customers
are struggling with, I don't
know how to predict my cloud
spend for three years. So I'm
just going to purchase, you
know, whatever they kind of tell
me in a calculator in a vacuum,
and it's not right.
Will Friedrich: Yeah, well, then
those secondary markets are, are
part of it. The other part is,
you're limited certain resources
won't let you do that you can
convert some you can't convert
others you can resize, you can
always purchase more, you can't
purchase less than those types
of things. So there's different
restrictions on on what you can
and can't do. And one of the
things that we will work with
this this customer on is that a
committed savings plan is
probably more conducive to their
needs than then reservation
instance, that's really the most
mature version of trying to get
a committed purchase to get a
discount residence was really
require you to understand that
the technical need for something
like that savings plans and and
even you know, Google's got the
sustained usage plan, the more
you use, the more you save that
type of thing. You can know less
about the underlying technical
use case for that resource and
still feel more confident in
doing those types of commitments
than you can with a reservation.
But, you know, those are some of
the nuances that when we start
working with customers, they
didn't even realize they could
do that. Or if they could, where
in the tool, would I use that?
And it's not so much whether or
not they made the right
commitment, or whether or not
they're looking at the right
report, it's that no one really
owned it. So when a condition in
their clients environment
changes, how do you react to
that? If there's a process in
place, and certain people
working on it, they can really
handle any anything that might
come their way?
Aaron Bock: Do you think the
misscopings that happen or the
lift and shift decision that's
made in a vacuum-- Do you think
that there's something driving
that you think it's lack of
knowledge? Do you think it's
that there are people are
running like a tool one time and
saying, well, like, let's run it
on our environment, and this is
what it's telling us, we should
be in this cloud, and here's how
we should do it. Like, what's
driving that? Because what would
always baffles me is I hear
customers over and over and
over. And if you're in this
space long enough, you hear
that's the problem with the
cloud, the you lift and shift
the costs get out of control,
and then it's hard to manage
them. So you, you know, you
think well, that will never
happen after a couple years when
you hear it every single time
when that's the warning about
the cloud, but it still does all
the time. Why does it happen so
often? Because it just easy to
miss? Is it a is it that people
focus on more than technology?
And they don't think about the
process and the people?
Will Friedrich: Yeah, that's a
great question. In my experience
and our experience working with
customers, it's that from a
culture and team perspective,
there's the capability teams can
do it. Teams can provision their
own cloud resources and
engineering teams and a lot of
sense, particularly mature ones.
They love that autonomy, and
rightfully so, I mean, the cloud
gives them that ability, they
ought to take advantage. What's
missing is the accountability.
There's there's no performance
KPI, there's no right sizing
score, there's no show back or
chargeback relative to the spend
impact of their decision.
There's nothing that comes back
to them that says, Yeah, you
were able to push that button.
But here's, here's what it did.
Here's the impact. And here's
what it means for you. And in
the case of chargebacks, and
organizations are trying to put
in place real chargebacks back
to the product teams P&L for how
they consume cloud resources.
Because in a sense, it it
generally speaking, it's not the
best idea to then try to
centrally control all of the
Cloud Spin and try to recreate a
procurement bottleneck that
often existed in the traditional
IT spin. So if teams are going
to continue to be distributed,
autonomous, doing that the
procuring the resources that
they need provisioning, the
resources, they need to build
their apps as quickly as they
need to. Don't get in the way of
that but create a mechanism for
them to be accountable for it.
And obviously, that
accountability and that that
transparency with other teams,
drives the kind of behavior
where all of a sudden, it's not
an unintentional abuse of the
availability of that resource.
It's a more intentional
stewardship over what they're
doing for the for the business.
And that's what we try to do.
And what we have done working
with customers trying to
increase their awareness and
close the gap between
capability. Yes, you can do it.
But accountability, what does it
mean for the business?
Aaron Bock: Who, when you
deliver your consulting, and
whatever that package may look
like, if it's there's an output
or, you know, I imagine there's
some sort of analysis that you
guys would do, who in the
organization is usually the
champion for really promoting a
fin ops culture? Especially for
the cloud? Is it usually coming
from the financial viewpoint? Or
do you see it a lot of times
coming from within IT, they just
don't know how to sell it, or
they don't know how to champion
it, if you will?
Will Friedrich: Yeah, our
champions have come from the
technologists, I use that term
generally. So sometimes it's the
CTO CIO, of those are different
functions, we have clients, but
those are two different roles,
depending on what they're
they're doing even even CDOs,
you know, Digital Officers that
understand that they're
responsible for that they they
may run the IT groups that
support the design and
engineering teams, one of the
things that I think will happen
more, and this is coming from
some of the data that's coming
through the fin ops foundation,
you know, they do the state of
thin ops report every year. And
in the 2022 findings, the
percentage of practitioners that
took the survey that identified
themselves as coming from a
financial or back office
function was less than 10%,
combined across all those types
and including procurement. And
we'd like to see that increase,
because I think that the cloud
thin ops focus is has done great
things for technologists who
already understand the cloud
already understand the nature of
the services, and to some
degree, they understand the
pricing models. But the finance
team is really just on the other
end of this, like a fire hose
trying to ingest all these
different changes in a
completely different cost model.
So when we conduct assessments,
for example, and we do
stakeholder interviews, we
absolutely have a concerted
effort to bring in financial
leaders. So it's usually a
there's a role within a lot of
organizations, we work with a
digital controller. So this is a
person who is essentially a
controller and all the functions
that you would associate a
financial controller for. But
they're they're focused on the
expenses for digital projects,
product development, and
software development. So we had
one customer where our main
sponsor was a CIO, but
ultimately, who they delegated
to help us navigate the
environment, help us do our
discovery, help us do our
interviews, and together our
information was a digital
controller, which was actually
very helpful because she could
help navigate both the tech
side, the business side, there
was a procurement function, who
definitely felt like they needed
a role in this new dynamic. And
you certainly didn't want to
alienate that group. But yeah, I
think it's interesting, as a
result of this type of emerging
discipline, our champions roles
are also changing. And it's kind
of exciting to see, you know, a
digital controller, that wasn't
a role I was working with from
the client side two years ago.
Aaron Bock: That's awesome. You
are talking about enterprises.
When you talk about Digital
Officers and CTOs and CIOs, I
assume you're working a lot with
enterprises, I guess. We do have
some listeners that are smaller
companies, mid market size
companies, who may not have all
those roles, who may not have
the ability to have like a full
fin ops group. So for a smaller
company, mid mid market, you
know, lean IT staff, maybe who
doesn't have the cloud
capabilities? How do they do
fin ops? Without, you know,
having all this expertise, and
how do they train their folks to
really, to use the cloud to the
best way possible, but not
overspend?
Will Friedrich: Yeah, I think
you're dipping your toe is
always a good measure. One of
the things that we advise
clients on is not to get caught
up in the the allure of
transformation, I have to
completely reinvent our culture
and our operations and
everything, etcetera, in some
arbitrary time box timeframe,
but we always say is take
incremental steps, right? A lot
of times you there is no ROI for
building a thin ops team. If
your spend is at a certain
level, let's let's say that that
spin is less than 5 million a
year, the waste associated with
that spin, which if it's on par
with industry average, it's
probably 30%. And so, you know,
a fin ops team could could
grossly exceed what you're
already overspending. So I think
coming up with champions who
want to learn more about that
discipline and can do it part
time and then as the need
develops, as your spend
increases, you move more
workloads and applications into
the cloud, you become more
dependent on those services. You
may have the justification for
having full time roles, but I
think for smaller organizations
relatively having a part time
focus across different types of
roles, I think business and data
analysts, product owners, and of
course, you know CTOs and CIOs,
but even just VPs of product ,VP
of IT, that those roles can
really get behind that kind of
effort. Because we really do
see, again, relative your
comment about midsize companies.
It's a grassroots movement in
terms of the internal need, at
the going back to the finop
survey, only 46% of the we need
to focus on fin ops comes from a
C level directive. Now we expect
that that's going to increase
significantly in the years to
come. As it becomes more of a
budget item, hey, we've got to
we got to best to address this
problem because it's leading to
overspend. But you know, roughly
44% of that came from people
lifting their head saying this
is a problem, I want to spend
more time looking at our cloud
bill, I want to dig into the
data to find out what's going on
where these anomalies are coming
from while we're overspending.
And so curiosity really helps,
too. So but I think, you know,
going back to where in smaller
companies does this come from?
I'd like to see it come from
analysts and product leads that
are looking at this saying, I'm
in charge of the p&l of this of
this product, and I'm consuming
this service, I'm probably doing
my organization a disservice by
not by not paying attention to
the kind of the cause and effect
of, of what we're doing with
Cloud Spin.
Aaron Bock: I think that's
great. And I think that there's
a lot of things that people can
do, you know, one of the things
that we see a lot is the
adoption of the cloud for a
small organization or mid mid
sized organization, you know,
they're not even to the fin ops
conversation, they're trying to
figure out, do we have the
personnel that understand the
cloud, that are interested in
doing it? Are they, you know, do
you have people in the
organization who are afraid of
change, and I think, depending
on where you're at, and the type
of companies you're working
with, that's a real
conversation, too. And so, it's
getting them to understand a fin
Ops is probably down the road,
but it can be started,
basically, when you go to the
cloud. And when you do that, and
you put that mindset, when
you're going to the cloud, you
will be better off down the
road, because you have a
practice for managing cloud
spend, which is one of the, you
know, I would say top three
problems that people would say
if they're going to the cloud.
So I think we agree with that
for, you know, kind of to wrap
up and not immediately. But I
have a couple questions for you
future looking, because we've
been talking about a lot about
fin ops now. So general question
about the cloud. So we've got
really right now with the hyper
scalers, you've got, you know,
you've got Google who's a
distant third. And then he got
Azure and AWS for Microsoft,
Azure GCP for Google, and then
you've got AWS for Amazon, those
are sort of the three I know
you've got Oracle, you've got I
think Alibaba is sometimes in
the mix, you've got some others,
but make a prediction. What do
you think is going to happen
with? Do you think there's going
to be more competition in five
years? And where will that come
from? Or do you think that these
three behemoths will just
continue to take off? And when
we talk about cloud and 5-10
years, we're still gonna be
talking about the same three
players?
Will Friedrich: Yeah, I think
where you'll see more players
coming in is in hybrid cloud
solutions. I mean, you're
already seeing that even even
with larger companies, you know,
IBM and Oracle spend a lot of
time in hybrid cloud. But in
terms of companies that have a
public cloud first strategy,
that's the level of service that
the type of performance they're
looking for. Those three
organizations are really in such
a position to just from a level
of investment perspective, to
really give those organizations
best of breed, I don't think
you're going to see things like
all of a sudden GCP overtakes
AWS and Azure starts to eat
major chunks of AWS market share
what I do think you'll see, and
this is just me personally
looking at data talking to
customers, and we're finding out
that more customers are adopting
a multi cloud strategy across
public providers. You know, in
even just a couple of years ago,
the main mindset was almost a
default of well, most of our
stuff is in Azure, therefore,
we're going to use Azure going
forward. And the problem with
that is no one provider can
cover every single use case,
you're going to need as a
customer from a from a cloud
service perspective. So we still
advocate for a one for one, you
know, resource or cloud provider
to application ratio. But
application A could be in Azure
application B could be in AWS,
and you could leverage the
different providers, and that's
good from an innovation
perspective. What that will also
do is grossly complicate your
ability to manage costs across
different providers. So the
other piece of innovation that
we will certainly see in the fin
ops realm develop is a whole
slew of providers that are
creating third party tools that
can help you aggregate all of
this information coming from
your different public providers
and help you assess your usage
patterns from Azure from AWS
from GCP. And what does that
mean for your overall spend? And
how's it going to help you make
decisions towards your spending
goals? So I don't think you're
going to see major changes in
market share relative to who's
first, second, third. But what I
do think you'll see is a larger
focus on multi cloud strategy
across the public providers.
Aaron Bock: What do you think
would slow down the adoption of
cloud at the rate we're going
right now? If there is anything?
Will Friedrich: Yeah, well, I
mentioned it earlier, I think
organizations are already doing
this, they're moving. And then
they either move too much too
fast too soon. And they did not
give themselves the right ROI
horizon. And then they they
can't save face to their
constituency, they can't go to
their board, they can't go to
their customers, they can't go
to their leadership and say,
this, this investment was worth
it. They're, they're forced from
a dollars and cents perspective,
to go back to to on prem. So I
think there's definitely a need
to make sure you have the right
candidate to move to the cloud.
And make sure that cost
management is part of your
migration plan, not something
that you focus, once your
workload has been transitioned,
once your application has been
moved. It's not too late at that
point. But it's certainly more
expensive to fix it.
Aaron Bock: Yeah. It's like your
personal budgeting and your
household or it's like personal
spending, you don't just look at
it once a year and say, Oh, we
spent way too much on so and so
you look at it every month, you
look at it every couple of
weeks, that's generally who
manages their money the best is
those who know, kind of what
they're spending and when
they're spending and how they're
spending and planning for
spending. It's no different for
a large company with the cloud,
it's looking at it all the time,
have a way to assess, have a way
to understand when there's peaks
and valleys, and the more you
can do that and get ahead of it,
the better you will be at
managing your cost.
Will Friedrich: And quickly to
that point, one, one comment to
that is one of the things that
we see with with our clients,
for example, is when we do the
stakeholder interviews, and we
talk to the finance team, what
they're used to is a a
purchasing cycle where you might
purchase gear for two years, but
you're purchasing for
anticipated growth, and you make
that purchase up front. You
don't do that in the cloud, you
don't have to you purchase for
what you need, then, because
when you do get to the point
where you need more, you need to
horizontally scale, vertically
scale, whichever the case, you
can do it in real time. So don't
don't get caught up in trying to
purchase for three years like
you did traditionally, even even
that simple dynamic of how it
worked in cap X and how it works
in this op X model. It's it's
totally different. And companies
that don't pay attention to that
wonder why they spent too much
and they did. They they they
they bought too much of the
cloud,
Aaron Bock: we get the question
sometimes can you cap X cloud?
Do you think there will ever be
a way to cap X cloud spend? What
do you think about that comment?
And what are you seeing?
Will Friedrich: Yeah, well,
companies do that. Now. I think
sometimes when that comment is
made, it's in the context of
when you purchase a commitment.
And it doesn't really matter
what the vehicle is could be a
reservation instance, could be a
savings plan could be a
sustained usage. But when you're
making that commitment, there's
a weighted average cost of
capital calculation that a lot
of organizations make because
that that prepayment, no matter
how many instances or services
you're running concurrently,
could be in the hundreds of
1000s of dollars. And so you're
weighing that investment versus
some of the other CapEx
investments that the company
might make. And once you get
past that, you you then make
that purchase and amortize it
over the term that you purchased
it for. So there are a lot of
times they consider those those
commitment based purchases to be
capital expenditures, even
though the on demand consumption
of that resource would be would
be an OP X type type of model.
So we're already seeing that
today. And a lot of companies do
that they treat that commitment,
like a project, which is which
is actually a good a good
strategy, because it takes you
through the breakeven and takes
you through the weighted average
cost of capital calculation to
Aaron Bock: do you see, you
know, I guess I hate to go back
to this, but you mentioned this,
and you kind of brought up
something that I've heard a
couple times recently, you know,
customers, your traditional
providers, when you think of
traditional infrastructure, you
know, they always Microsoft is a
perfect example with your your
email licensing, O365 M365. You
would sign an EA and you commit
to levels of spin blah, blah,
blah. I've heard more recently,
companies, enterprises a lot of
times who are in a battle with
certain you know, okay, do we go
Azure? Do we go GCP they're
probably not looking at the
multi cloud as much as they
should be. But let's just say
that they're getting a sweet
deal. Air quotes on that, like
from one of the cloud providers
to say, hey, commit to this
level of spend. Do you think
that those are good things for
companies or because because I
look at it and say, If you
commit to a level spend, you're
you're basically forcing
yourself to get to some level
that you might not need to. And
so you're finding any way to do
it, I could see why you think
it'd be good because hey, we got
to get there one way or another.
So let's just commit. But I also
see that it could prevent people
from really embracing fin ops to
say, Are we spending the right
amount of money? Or okay, we
spend our money, we spend our
commitment, that's great, where
they're like, I doesn't
incentivize you to optimize. And
that's my big problem with it.
I'm curious, your thoughts?
Will Friedrich: Yeah. Well, in
the case of Microsoft, for
example, there's the agreement,
which depending on what kind of
agreement you signed, it's
really entitlement, right? What
type of discounts or, what type
of access to consume services
across the board do you have and
then within that, you can still
make targeted commitment
purchases, based on what you
need. And so there's different
use cases for whether or not you
would you would do that. So
you'd have an enterprise
agreement, that that is based on
some overall consumption model,
and you would put your highest
volume, most sustained, least
likely to change most dependable
workloads, you can put those
through a one year commitment,
let's say even a three year,
again, depending on what the
workloads are doing. But for
your product development, and
for your r&d and things that
need to change on a dime. That's
risky. And so you might not
necessarily commit to those, you
might work Spot Instances, for
example, you might try to work
those into your plan, those
actually carry deeper discounts
than reservations themselves.
And if you use them
appropriately, you can achieve
bigger discounts for
applications you're developing
where your resource needs could
change significantly, your usage
patterns do this, they spike up
and down. They're not very
consistent. So again, it comes
back to use case but I think
it's always the right
combination. I don't the
providers have set customers up
to get trapped in the is an
enterprise agreement or not,
it's a commitment or not, I
think those are good. In certain
cases, I think where you need
flexibility, they might not be
as good could be riskier and
more expensive in the long run
to commit to something now,
there's other avenues to get to
that saving.
Aaron Bock: Yeah, and I don't
mean to say they're always bad,
I just see in certain situations
where it's, it's two-one, it's
like you said, multicloud, which
I agree that you need to really
consider multi cloud approach. I
just think that I see it in the
light of there's too many,
there's too much being put into
one just because of a number
that was put out. And I think
it's lack of understanding of
what what you should andcould be
doing. So I definitely agree
with you. And I think there's
always you know, a use case. And
there's always a scenario that
does work and doesn't work for
the listeners. And this is kind
of how we always close our
episode. Will, by the way, this
has been a super insightful
show. I think a lot of folks
will learn a lot from this
really appreciate you sharing,
you're giving a State of the
Union, the Will Friederick State
of the Union in front of a
million, 10 million people,
however many people you want to
give a lot of people and you get
to give one piece of advice. It
can be general it general cloud,
specifically about fin ops and
ops in general. What advice do
you give to people?
Will Friedrich: That's a good
question, you know, Aaron, I
think of it like this, I'll
think that I'm imagining myself
speaking to, let's say 10
million young people early in
career first or second year. And
this is something that I helped
with, you know, coaching our
teams, help coaching staff,
whatever the case, and even
something that I pay attention
to as I'm as I'm doing it,
borrowing from there, there's a
book by Dr. Jordan Peterson.
It's called 12 rules for life.
And it's really an anecdote to
empower you as an individual to
help you be more valuable to
yourself, your community, your
organizations, and one of the
rules is be precise in your
speech. And when I read that,
and I read the chapter
corresponding to that rule, it
really, really hit home with me.
And you see that a lot in
professional and personal life.
And I think it comes down to not
spending too much time making
generalist claims about whatever
it is that you're talking about,
whether you're talking to a
customer, whether you're talking
to a partner, whether you're
talking to whatever it is, in a
professional sense. So I would
say I always try to encourage
people to at a certain point,
that that claim should be backed
by a piece of data. And then
that data point is used to
substantiate that claim. And
then coming up with, you know,
putting that data point in
context. So going back to the
comment I made about compound
annual growth rate between Cloud
Spin and traditional it spin. I
think a lot of people could go
out there and make the claim
that the cloud is great, and
it's growing and all these types
of things. But look at the
numbers. And then what are the
numbers suggest, right? And you
could even go out and say
something like, well, Cloud is
growing in the US across two
segments by 15% a year but what
does that mean? Compared to
what? And when. So when you look
at that compared to traditional
spend, it's like, wow, 15% is a
lot more than 1.3%. Those two
growth trajectories are not even
on the same plane. That's just
kind of a silly example in the
context of this conversation.
But but it really goes back to,
you know, being precise in your
speech, and being able to use
data and information to back up
your claims. I think it really
helps conversations and really
gets to the heart of what you're
trying to say. So that would be
my tidbit for for young
professionals, I would say.
Aaron Bock: We appreciate you
sharing that. Will, we
appreciate you joining the show
today. Thank you for sharing all
the information that you have.
Will, how can people get in
touch with you if they want to
reach out?
Will Friedrich: Yeah,
absolutely. You can reach me
through LinkedIn, that's
probably my preferred social
media outlet. Or you can you can
reach me through email
william.friederick@experis.com.
And yeah, I would love to chat
fin ops and to chat cloud and
services. I'm a community member
of the fin ops foundation so you
can find me on their Slack
channel. So all of those are
great.
Aaron Bock: Well, thanks for
joining Will, we will put the
information in the show notes.
Super insightful. I hope you all
enjoyed this episode. Thanks for
listening. And I hope you guys
have a great rest of the day.
Narrator: Thanks for listening.
The IT Matters podcast is
produced by a color and it
advisory firm that helps
businesses navigate the vast and
complex IT marketplace. Learn
more about up kala at op
klla.com