From the course: FinOps Essentials for Cloud Deployments

Cloud spending observability

From the course: FinOps Essentials for Cloud Deployments

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Cloud spending observability

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- [Instructor] Cloud spending observability provides us with the ability to understand what's going on, not just seeing cost data on a screen. This means that we're able to ask questions to cost observability systems, and the system should be able to provide an answer. For example, what percentage of spending increased over the last year, and is this trend likely to continue? This is not a chat bot, but likely is able to respond with information on a screen that outlines the response to your question. What's key here is that you get information versus just data. Observability is about providing insights, not just raw data that you have to figure out yourself. Observability is not just related to finops, but is a concept that also supports operations and security using different tooling, but the same concept. Indeed, there are some finops capabilities supported by some of these tools, allowing them to provide cost insights along with operational insights that are more useful. For example, if we have a cloud system performance problem, we may also want to understand the cost impact of that problem as well. Some observability systems will provide both, which is very useful if you're attempting to define the cost impact of a problem. You should not get wrapped up in the concept observability more than just understanding the advantage of using cost observability, both as a concept and as a set of tools. The idea is allowing technology to work in providing the insights you need around cloud spending and planning. You just need to understand what questions should be asked to these systems.

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