Discover how can GreenOps play a pivotal role in reducing cloud waste, environmental impact, and associated costs, in organizations where FinOps practices have been in place for a while?
As businesses navigate the evolving landscape of IT infrastructure, cloud computing, and AI-driven innovation, two critical frameworks are gaining traction: GreenOps and FinOps. Individually, these methodologies aim to drive efficiency, cost control, and sustainability. Together, they form a powerful partnership that can revolutionize how companies manage their IT ecosystems.
GreenOps focuses on optimizing IT operations with sustainability as a core objective. It emphasizes reducing the environmental impact of IT infrastructure by improving resource utilization, leveraging renewable energy sources, and adopting greener practices across data centers, cloud environments, and software development processes.
FinOps (Financial Operations) is a financial management discipline that ensures businesses derive maximum financial value from cloud investments. It provides a framework for tracking cloud usage, allocating costs, and creating accountability to optimize expenditures without compromising performance.
The convergence of these two practices creates a holistic approach that drives both cost-efficiency and environmental responsibility.
Cloud adoption has surged over the past decade, but waste has become a significant issue. Studies show that around 30% of cloud budgets went to waste in 2023, according to reports from Gartner or Flexera, with organizations paying for unused or underutilized resources. This trend is intensifying as cloud usage scales, with 75% of companies reporting increasing cloud waste, as noted by the StormForge Report. This inefficiency results in financial losses and unnecessary environmental impact through excess energy consumption.
IT leaders are responding to the cloud waste crisis. With the recent surge in cloud cost induced by the main cloud providers, 42% of CIOs and CTOs now consider cloud waste as their top IT challenge. Beyond cost concerns, IT departments are under pressure to align with broader organizational sustainability goals. Addressing cloud waste has become a strategic imperative for forward-thinking CIOs aiming to future-proof their businesses.
Cloud computing’s rapid growth also poses an urgent energy-sourcing challenge. Data centers currently account for 1% of global energy consumption, which could rise to 3-8% by 2030 if unchecked, according to the International Energy Agency. As all industry sectors are in need of more energy, mainly electricity, these figures underscore the urgent need for IT operations to drastically optimize their usage if we want them to sustain growth and our capacity to adapt for the years to come.
How can GreenOps play a pivotal role in reducing cloud waste, environmental impact, and associated costs, in organizations where FinOps practices have been in place for a while?
GreenOps uses Carbon KPI as a new lever to optimize resource utilization, identify underutilized instances, and implement energy-efficient practices. The main difference with cost is that carbon reduction is a common value shared by all layers in the IT production chain, regardless of the fact staff members receive an incentive for cost reduction.
Therefore, GreenOps can highlight optimizations and trigger decisions that FinOps could indeed reveal but were not strong enough to justify.
A new perspective on efficient resource utilization
Organizations seeking to measure their IT carbon footprint often find traditional GreenIT estimations lacking/offering limited visibility into virtual and cloud-native services, leading to poor business analytics per department, team, or application. Cloud provider data, if available, fails to provide actionable insights.
OxygenIT eliminates these blind spots, and that’s only part of the story. When presented with the capability for cost reduction, many IT teams claim they have already optimized their infrastructure. Yet, when they connect their cloud subscriptions to OxygenIT and receive a holistic analysis in under 30 minutes, the reality becomes clear:
FinOps may surface some of these inefficiencies, but why do these numbers continue to emerge, no matter where OxygenIT is deployed? Because FinOps influences leadership, not the teams actually running IT operations. Developers and IT Ops are rarely incentivized to take the risks necessary for meaningful optimization. Downsizing underutilized VMs carries a risk of service disruption. Infrastructure architects aren’t motivated to rebuild applications in a cloud-native environment if they aren’t accountable for cost savings. Contractors have no reason to disrupt their stable applications with eco-conscious development practices when there’s no personal benefit.
This is where Carbon KPIs make the difference. By giving IT stakeholders - from developers, IT Ops to PMOs - a clear vision of their individual impact, GreenOps in general and Carbon KPIs specifically create the pressure and accountability needed to drive real, measurable reductions in cloud waste, emissions, and cost. IT optimization is no longer just a management directive, it becomes a shared responsibility at every level.
In tandem with FinOps strategies, GreenOps ensures that sustainability initiatives directly contribute to cost reduction, turning environmental responsibility into a driver of financial performance.
OxygenIT is a trusted leader in GreenOps solutions, providing businesses with actionable insights and tools to enhance efficiency and sustainability across their IT operations. Here are some of the ways OxygenIT delivers value:
Right-Sizing Resources with Actionable Metrics: OxygenIT evaluates workload demands and provides tailored metrics that empower IT teams to allocate resources efficiently. This approach prevents overprovisioning, reduces waste, and lowers unnecessary costs. With this data, organizations can make smarter decisions to scale operations as needed.
Managing Idle Resources Effectively: OxygenIT pinpoints idle or underutilized resources and provides actionable recommendations to deactivate or reallocate them. By identifying inefficiencies, IT teams can cut waste and boost operational performance.
Providing Insights for Auto-Scaling: OxygenIT tracks real-time demand and offers recommendations for dynamic capacity adjustments. These insights help businesses maintain peak performance without overusing or underutilizing resources.
Leveraging Carbon KPIs for Holistic Optimization: OxygenIT helps companies integrate carbon KPIs into their operations. These KPIs spotlight resources that FinOps alone may struggle to downsize, reducing operational risks associated with cost-only decisions. By tying operational goals to carbon footprint reductions, teams can unite around a shared objective, fostering more eco-conscious initiatives.
Driving Eco-Design Across the IT Production Chain: Carbon KPIs motivate developers and contractors by providing visibility into their environmental impact. This transparency encourages greater eco-design efforts across all operational levels, often more effectively than cost-saving incentives.
Planning IT Projects with Carbon KPIs: GreenOps allows IT projects to be planned using carbon KPIs in the same way financial metrics are used in FinOps. OxygenIT streamlines this process by offering tools and insights that align sustainability goals with project planning, creating a seamless integration of carbon reduction into operational strategies.
Precision Insights Through Expertise: OxygenIT harnesses its in-depth knowledge of IaaS and PaaS services to fine-tune every aspect of cloud infrastructure. Its patented technology is also able to accurately reveal the carbon footprint of any virtual service running on top of bare metal servers. This comprehensive approach ensures that resources are used efficiently, eliminating waste.
Data-Driven Sustainability Metrics: OxygenIT offers reliable carbon emissions metrics that factor in region-specific Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and carbon intensities. These metrics empower businesses to make well-informed decisions about their sustainability goals.
Full Transparency: OxygenIT provides complete visibility by making available to auditors all data sources and intermediary calculations, ensuring auditability and fostering trust in its solutions.
Customized Recommendations: Recognizing that no two businesses are the same, OxygenIT delivers tailored recommendations for immediate impact and long-term sustainability.
GreenOps is no longer just a sustainability initiative—it is a crucial strategy for enhancing operational efficiency and financial performance. By integrating carbon KPIs and aligning them with FinOps practices, businesses can unlock new opportunities for innovation, cost savings, and environmental responsibility. OxygenIT plays a vital role in this transformation, providing the insights and tools needed to unify sustainability and cost management under one cohesive framework. Organizations that leverage OxygenIT’s GreenOps solutions are better positioned to reduce their environmental impact, optimize resource usage, and achieve long-term growth. In today’s evolving IT landscape, embracing GreenOps with OxygenIT is not just the smart choice—it’s the path to a sustainable and competitive future.
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