FinOps X day London 2026 - Keynote comments

This was a great event, so I definitely want to thank the FinOps Foundation, in particular Dean Oliver and JR, Rob, Steve, Sam, and everyone else on the team, for a really successful event

These are my notes trying to identify what surprised me or made me think. My comments are in italic.

Risk

I put risk first because risk and money are what the board cares about. Making decisions based on risk and reward is what decision-makers do. Yet, until now, risk was a bad word in FinOps. For the first time, the Foundation discussed risk, which I’m extremely happy about.

FinOps

• The FinOps Foundation is about people.
  • I want to help companies.
• The change in the F2 mission widens the surface area a lot. It will create discussion (possibly friction) with other practices that are also tech value stakeholders.
• A Gartner analyst sees three scenarios for the future of FinOps:
  • FinOps converges and absorbs ITAM, ITFM and others
• FinOps diverges and fragments with its processes split between IT, Finance and other teams
• FinOps integrates and sharpens boundaries with adjacent disciplines
• I see the best path for companies using FinOps to be a little of two and three, with strong standards for FinOps like finance has, and to allow specialist teams in other departments to do what they are best at. Procurement should negotiate contracts, not FinOps.
• I find it dangerous that many talks are using savings as a measure of success. What happens when savings are done—do you become useless? I do not think so. Read my thoughts in the career section. Lucky you, it is the next one.

AI

• Agent as a new persona. This is a great idea.

Careers

• The fact that a part of the presentation was about career paths shows how hard it is to find a next step after being a FinOps lead. You are not tech, nor finance, nor procurement...
  • I think that FinOps should be the trusted executive partner that given the company strategy will make have it implemented. This is Top-down FinOps.

Data

• 99 Fortune 100 companies are working with the FinOps Foundation.
  • impressive.

FOCUS

• There are now two companies ONLY sharing billing data in FOCUS format
  • Vercel and Nebius.

Framework

• Bigger
• There are now Scopes and Tech categories.
• Scopes are said to be about business...that's new
• Cost categories, new too. Look like what I thought was a scope.

Executive

• Executives are usually two levels above the practitioners.
• FinOps should have milestones allowing execs to decide where to invest next. I read invest as time, effort and money.

Doing FinOps

• "Every decision look reasonable in isolation." I read this as 'coordination needed' so Top down FinOps. (I am biased)