Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Alexa, one of the most influential voices in the FinOps community and the creator of the FinOps Cash Flow newsletter. In today's FinOps weekly podcast special, Alexa will share her unique insights on the critical role of procurement in FinOps. Her story on how she became a FinOps from being an English teacher.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: It's been an, it's been an awesome journey, totally something I would never expect myself to be on. I mean just like five, five and a half years ago I started teaching English liter to high school students.
That's what I thought my career was going to be for the rest of my life, rest of my working life.
And as I got into teaching I knew I needed a life switch.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: You're about to hear insights that will say how you think about finos. Here's finos weekly special with Alexa Buscato. Enjoy. I'm going to start with, you know, talking with the community, one of the, you know, major topics that we have seen in 2025 for Finos. So how you have seen the evolution of the community in this year and what aspects do you think are going to be changing also in 2026?
[00:01:11] Speaker B: So I mean I walked into this community this year and I think I have already seen such immense growth in finops and I can see the expansion happening fast, not just inside cloud infrastructure, but FinOps is expanding beyond that, especially within procurement. That's kind of my special take with FinOps Capital Cash Flow, finding opportunities where FinOps can fit elsewhere.
And I mean just in this year of itself we're talking with Cloud plus we're seeing that AI is totally blowing up the FinOps playbook and how that's going to transform into 2026.
GPU costs is a whole conversation now in terms of AI as well.
And FinOps is going through like a very real, real cultural shift at this point.
We're see framework actually being applied and we're seeing how else we can almost enhance the framework to ensure that our foundations are secure because of all of these innovations that are happening, especially with AI.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely, definitely. And, and you know there is a lot of change going through in, in finops. And you know, I wanted to, to talk about more, you know, your, your finops cash flow involvement. So that's probably one of the most or the highest contribution that you have been doing to the community. So I want you to learn from you what is finops cash flow, what people should take a look at it and why are you doing this for the community?
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Totally. So Finops Cash Flow is a newsletter centered around bringing FinOps concepts into procurement. Really bridging the gap between finance Personas and procurement Personas through the lens of finops.
I noticed right off the bat that procurement is kind of left off to the side a little bit like a conversation when truthfully they need to be pushed up to the front. And when we think about shifting finops left, I think about that goes right to procurement, that goes right into the intake form because finops goes.
Now we're talking beyond cloud infrastructure and just how we're managing cloud spend as a whole.
I mean even when we think about enterprise commitments, these are multi cloud commitments, usually from big enterprises. So they're managing millions of millions of dollars from AWS, Google and Microsoft. And so this efficiency through the FinOps framework still needs to be applied because enterprise discounts, they're discounted, but that doesn't mean it's efficient. So how well are these enterprises using these discounts?
And it's also trying to formulate a multi year strategy at this point because these commitment discounts are so large.
We need to have vendor transparency and make sure negotiation is on point so these businesses can drive the best value for their overall enterprise commitment. So finops just naturally forms. In my newsletter, I hope it's almost a learning process. I try to learn something new every week and I try to formulate it into a newsletter to share with people.
Truthfully, it's shocking to see how many people are interested and also invested in their learning journeys.
So I'm just happy to provide another area where they can just get quick useful information that can drive value into their own work life.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And I love to see like, you know, we discuss like a lot about the topic. We you know, organize all of these together and it was like, you know, I felt the finops for procurement like the procurement people and the finance people weren't very covered in general.
But you know, in FinOps weekly, especially because it's the area that I have action to modify and I was saying I think I need someone else from the procurement, from more of the finance perspective to share these insights to a community that maybe knows better the language than I do. And that's why I collaborated with Alexa and I started this idea and I think it turned out great. I think we feel a gap that it was in the, in the ecosystem which I think finos Weekly born with that idea and finos Castle was a bit of the same and I'm super happy with the reaction of the community and I'm Looking forward to see how many more people we can bring and what we can do in 2026. You know, I wanted to also dive into a bit into your story because, you know, we've seen like, a lot of people asking about, how do you come become a finops? How do you, how do you envision this journey? And I think you have quite an interesting journey to share because you don't come from a technical background, from me or anyone else. So can you tell us a bit more about how you landed into finops?
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Absolutely.
It's been an awesome journey, totally something I would never expect myself to be on. I mean, just five, five and a half years ago, I started teaching English literature to high school students.
That's what I thought my career was going to be for the rest of my life, rest of my working life.
And as I got into teaching, I knew I needed a life switch. And I just started diving into my LinkedIn network, asking people what they do.
And I managed to stumble upon FinOps through a series of people that I just absolutely adore and appreciate today.
And When I discovered FinOps, I thought it was, it was very interesting because to me as a teacher with this teaching background, the, the heart of that profession is collaboration. You have to collaborate among your students, students have to collaborate with one another. And as a teacher, you have to facilitate that collaboration.
And when I found the FinOps framework, I was like, this is exactly what I do in the classroom. And, and I found that it just naturally to me, the information of how and why FinOps exists and the other aspect of FinOps that I just felt really drawn to is making these concepts accessible among a wide audience, because the people who are implementing finops, I mean, it's global, it's different types of Personas, engineering, finance, business leadership, and now beyond, even into procurement.
And it's so essential that we are making sure that our community is understanding exactly what's in front of them.
And as a teacher, my specialty was to translate complex concepts in a way that brought value to my students.
So I see with finops, the way that I would explain, whether it's the framework or certain opportunities within their cloud environment, I would explain that differently to finance Personas than I would to engineers. They don't value the same things.
And the, and where I see I come in is really trying to unite that communication between finance Personas and especially engineers, because this is where the collaboration needs to happen in order to see growth, in order to see highest business value.
And I mean, I just hopped in and tried to get involved into the community. And I found that like, I mean, the community's growing so fast, but I found that everyone's been extremely curious. I think that's something that strengthens spin ops is because everyone is leading with curiosity and I think we need that in order to make sure that we stay grounded in our foundation too. So it just, it became a very natural pursuit of knowledge but also wanting to help because I truly see the value in managing our cloud environments, especially at scale. Like, oh my gosh, I just can't, I cannot believe the numbers that we're working with.
And when, when enterprises actually engage in that framework, it's, you see a difference and you see savings and at the end of the day I think that creates a ripple effect and it helps everyone.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think like your, your study was super interesting for me because when, when I saw it I felt like, okay, like a lot of people can, you know, identify and see where, where to come from and how you can leverage like soft skills for, you know, becoming finops and how important they are. Like, you know, you're going from a non technical, let's say background you come from, from, from the teaching side, especially like literature, like side. So it's crazy. It's super crazy. And I think, you know, I have a question on that side that maybe, you know, it's a fun one, which is like, do you think it's more difficult to manage, you know, an English class or a finops team?
[00:10:38] Speaker B: Oh my gosh, it's so funny. I was actually just having this conversation like yesterday and I was saying, truthfully, it's pretty similar.
I mean, running a classroom is really tough. It is, it is really tough. And in its own way, I would say that you actually do come across similar challenges because at the end of the day, we're humans.
As much as we want to think logically and act logically, we still have to acknowledge the emotional side of ourselves. We have to acknowledge our learning strengths and weaknesses. And especially when it comes to finops and trying to implement this collaborative cultural practice, we have to acknowledge that there's a million and one ways that people interact with one another.
And truthfully, I think it's a matter of just acknowledging it, honoring it, and seeing what are the best ways we can collaborate and communicate. And it's truly through getting to know each other.
And I've noticed that in the Finops world and between like Finops teams, you have to explore those same things. Like in the beginning of the year, every school year, it's like, I have to get to know my students, not just as students, but as people. How do they work? How do they think?
And these are the same questions that I'm finding, like, that I'm asking myself and that I also call other people to ask their team members because I think when you get to know those type of quirks, those strengths, those weaknesses, then you can enhance that FinOps framework to specifically fit your business model and your business teams. And it's just I.
There's a lot of parallels and I think they're both equally difficult. But yeah, I'm shocked with how similar the process is.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's great, that's fun. I was wondering to, to ask you because it's, it's something that. This seems like super different, but after all, you are managing people, some older, some younger, but you are also managing people. You are trying to make them, you know, achieve some goal or make some tasks or, you know, learn something as if you are like a lead or an educator.
So I think, like, you can translate a lot that. I think that's probably one of the reasons that you, you know, make it so, so quick and so good to the, to the finos ecosystem.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Right, thanks. Well, that's like, it's such a, that's honestly such a compliment. It's, I mean, it. I do find a lot of joy to be. Because it helps me too, because sometimes I can't lie that there's a lot of. And I think just among the corporate world, there's a lot of jargon and it's a lot, it's a lot of words to keep track of, it's a lot of acronyms. It's just, it's hard. And especially with finops still being such a new practice to a lot, a lot of enterprises, it's something that we're still, I think, formulating almost a pathway, an entryway to ensure that everyone is fully understanding what's going on. So I find a lot of joy in being able to deliver information about FinOps. I mean, for example, like Focus 1.3, that update just dropped. And I found immense amount of joy to be able to provide an update in my own words in a way that was, you know, could be a little bit more digestible to even one person that is still understanding what the Focus specification is.
And at the end of the day, if it means like the content that I'm creating or I'm writing on LinkedIn gets through to someone in a way that they really can understand and resonate with that means I'm doing my job.
[00:14:21] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I totally agree. And I think one of the benefits or one of the things that I did as well for the beginning was trying to understand what the hell was finops in my own words and try to explain it to the people. And that kind of post and that kind of content was the one that resonated the most.
And I follow the same path. I think we do. I think that's probably one of the reasons that I wanted to, you know, work with you. It's because we kind of were aligned in the, in the language that we want to deliver phenotypes because like there is a lot of terms, like with everything new, there is a lot of things to understand, there is a lot of ways to see it and you need to like digest it and make it simple for people to try understand. If you want to go through that path of, you know, teaching and sharing content and all of that. Right. I think like, it's a good thing and we'll always be, you know, trying to like the practice will be always evolving and there will be always new things that we need to, you know, update new releases, new features, new tools, feature from cloud providers, all of that that we need to explain. And for, to be honest, that's one of the, you know, best performing content that I have seen is like, yeah, let's try to explain things and let's try to, you know, suck. Guys, what's going on? Like you have a feed of cloud updates from, from the providers. I was like, yeah, let's do a summary and why is it important so people can understand and not have to do the my job, which is like going through the feed and seeing like, okay, what the hell was this update about? Because I have no idea. I want people not to have that problem. Right?
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean it's like, and again, like kind of connecting it back to the classroom. It's like students have standards for reasons, learning standards, goals that they have to meet toward the end of the year in order for them to move on. It's the, it's the same thing with FinOps. It's. We're at checkpoints at this, at this time. It's like we have to make sure that we're understanding the basic foundations in order to discuss more intricate and complex concepts. Because like, I mean like we're seeing, with the expansion of FinOps so quickly, it's like we want to understand the basics so we can address what's coming, which is AI, automated remediation.
Getting those really deep waste detections to make sure that we're finding all opportunities within our cloud environment to optimize.
But if we're, if we're still stuck on tagging and cost allocation, we're going to have to address that before we can get to the more complex deep waste options here. So it's like it really. I'm a big proponent of making sure that we're on the same page and for the foundations and the fundamentals before moving on to the, the more complex concepts.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: Definitely. Yeah. We need to, you know, establish the fundamentals and then go step by step so we can apply learning processes to the practice. And you know, wanting to talk a bit more about the community in general. So you know when, like when you started in the FinOps ecosystem, how did the community help you and what you have found useful? And another question which is like what you would like to have seen or known before once you one when you joined the finops that you know now that's really good.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: So okay, funny story. I, I like to tell this to people when I tell them about my just finop story in general.
I mean the, I mean the community was, has just been astounding from, from the get go. It's like when I asked for help, I definitely received help or I received insight and guidance.
But when FinOps X came around I was like ooh, this is something I want to go to.
And not realizing I saw the 2024 recap. It looked amazing and I was like I'm feeling fomo. I really wanted to go. And not realizing the recap was posted by jr.
I commented on it. I was like oh, just want to go so bad I missed the scholarship cycle. I just don't know because this is when I was still trying to finops world so I wasn't in a finops job yet. I was just really trying to network. Didn't realize that was Junior though posting that. And I definitely felt really red in the face once he replied to, replied to my comment and offering me an opportunity to go to FinOps X. I mean amazing that that's even available too that someone like JR is so active within the community and the FinOps foundation is just what it is and everyone's so helpful. That access I just think is an amazing thing.
But the fact that you can be individually reached out to by people that are really the core founders of this community and you can get knowledge and get information from them, I think that's incredible.
Um, but yeah, I think that was also a funny Learning moment of like, oh, okay, this, this community is still really growing too.
But yeah, I did not realize that was JR and he gave me an opportunity to open up sex and it changed my life. So, so shout out to J.R. thank you.
But yeah, it, it, I think just that in of itself itself that one on one connection communication, being able to have access to people.
I mean I just think the overall willingness, that's like the biggest thing for me. People are just willing to talk.
Eric Malartzuk is another person name drop that like he reached out to me to like help me understand finops more and yeah, and I've just had like incredible mentors along the way since then. And gosh, if there was one thing I wish I knew beforehand, that's actually really. That's a great question.
Oh, I think I just wish I knew a little bit more. I think things that I'm learning now, I just wish I had more of that technical background that like, I just, I just wish I had more access to either like mock data sets or ways that I can run scenarios to help me understand what it looks like hands on. Because I think that was one of the friction points I ran into entering the industry. It was just because I didn't come from a technical background and honestly not everyone in finops is going to come from a technical background. So I really wanted to engage in more hands on optimization labs or things that can really put me in it without having to like try to push my way into a job first so I can come in with a better understanding. But that's about it. But I think those resources are continuously being pushed out there too.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I totally agree like with what you mentioned it's missing or that you would wish you would know. I think that application, that handsome part I think needs still to be improved on. FinOps. I always say that there is a limitation that you cannot have, you know, actually do some finops or some, let's say some reactive finops and some major, you know, optimizations up until you have a huge field to optimize. Right.
It's good that you can do like preventive phenos which you can define architectures, you can define things that you have to test it out based on the build and it's difficult to simulate everything with simulators and all of that. So like this makes like even though it's incentivized, like you know, simulating and doing all these architecture designs up until you have like the opportunity to have, you know, a real deal do the negotiations, you Cannot do like a, you know, contract negotiation if you don't have a contract to negotiate with. Right.
It's something that, for example, that's why I always like to have or find the people that does it so that they can explain it. Like for example, bringing Cody to the summit or bringing people from large companies that have challenges that I don't think people would have, but I want to help also the people that are in that position because they have a lot of responsibility, negotiating a contract or handling procurement payments and all the payroll and you know, all the things involved. Like what happens if you, you know, miss a thing with AWS or with GCP or with Azure. Like the people really don't know. And it's like I, for example, I don't have that and I, that's why I reach out and see and try. Okay, let's bring people that know so that you, we can, we can help the community. Like if someone is having this problem and I'm able to solve it, I will try to, to do so. Right. And it aligns. On what you said about the, you know, people willingness to, to contribute, I think probably, like I've seen this is one of the most contributing oriented people wanting always to share, wanting always to contribute.
Than for example, on, on the DevOps side, I also see it like more on the open source side to, to be honest, more on the coding. I think they have more technical background. But this is a similar approach, one more oriented to technical and this one is more like, you know, the practice, the culture, the framework itself. So I love this, like the idea of this community that's like why I'm fully committed to it. And I love to see that this also affecting older people. Right. And also, you know, I wanted to ask about maybe like how, because you had, you know, your students, your people and you wanted to, you know, have like contributions from, from them. Like you want to keep them incentivized. So how do you think the community can be kept incentivized, can be kept contributing? What do you think? You know, what's the homework or what's the plans that we need to do to, for the community to keep growing and keep contributing for, for 2026?
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So I mean, in terms of like incentivizing people to continue, I think it's just like really creating these spaces, these community spaces or virtual spaces rather, where people can meet and drive value through their conversations. And like at the end of the day too, it's like we all are, we're working too. So it's like we don't want to add to people's plate necessarily, but I think it's really cultivating specific spaces like the Cloud Efficiency Hub where people can actually drive value through the resources that they're gaining from something like that while being able to communicate and talk to one another. These slack communities that are happening across the FinOps Foundation, FinOps Weekly and the Cloud Efficiency Hub, like these are places where people can actually get to know one another and have access to one another and you know, having more events, I think like that's kind of like something we want to make this fun too. Right? Like it's like we, this is work. Sure. But like at the end of the day we want an experience out of this. How can we ensure that people are having experiences where they're learning something? I mean Finops X is something like kind of like that's kind of the concept blown up.
But how can we create smaller experiences throughout the year where people one are coming together? It's enjoyable. It doesn't feel like work, but they're still drawing value.
So I think that's something to keep an eye out for. 2026 is like definitely having more events that cultivate learning, but also have it, have it be fun. Let's gamify things, let's stickers. I don't know. Badges. People love badges. I don't know but, but I think definitely having those community events will change the game a bit more.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I totally agree with that. I have to say that I have been like researching lately about, you know, the stickers providers and all of that because the, the good and like I love the presidential events and organizing stuff.
My problem is that now that I have like a global community, I have to deliver things like globally and that's not easy unless you are Amazon or things like that.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it is, it's. I mean it is crazy to it. I mean finops is so global. I mean that that's I think the other, I guess even another incentive to this too. It's like I found immense joy from just being able to have network all over the world. I have like talk to you in Spain, I'm here in Arizona in the United States. I have friends in Israel, I have friends in Canada. I have friends. Like it's like, it's, it's amazing. This is, that's just another perk that has nothing to do with work but everything to do with work at the same time.
And I think that just highlighting that in itself, like we get to Have a global community, we get to learn about each other in a way that 10 years ago would still be a little unthinkable. And so it's just, yeah, I think that in itself is an incentive is being able to just get this cultural worldview through the lens of FinOps, which is a cultural practice.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: So definitely I think like the onside, you know, always like when we talk about the events like you know, the, the rain bands, the ignites, the finops X is like you, you get a lot of the content but the content is always there.
Like you can review it and recheck it, but the network that the, the contact that you make there, the, the conversation that you have there, that those are unique for that event and for you.
So definitely it's one of the best things to do. And I think I always encourage people to like, yeah, content is okay, the speakers are amazing, but you always have opportunity to check those. And then the networking, you need to focus on talking to people, getting to know what they're thinking about what they are doing in the day to day, how you can learn from them, what you can help them with.
Those are the main things and those are like always like it's, it needs to be on site, needs to be close one on one because otherwise it makes it really, even though you know it, the virtual thing allows us the opportunity to chat like in the day to day because I don't know, I cannot move to Arizona like every time I want, I can, I need to, it goes through a process and it makes me, you know, collaborate with people otherwise. So I think that's like, that's the balance that we always need to keep with like the virtual thing. It's very helpful for the day to day and then you need to like record an event so that you know, you can get the community feeling. Right?
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think this is like the, it's the best way for us to learn because like I bringing it back to the classroom again. We all have our individual strength, strengths, different ways of learning, different ways of expressing our knowledge. And I think on a global scale we have the luxury of seeing just a wide range of strength, a wide range of knowledge and skills that together, like putting all of our brain power together, it, it makes sense that we're here, that we're trying to create cloud efficiency and trying to have these best practices and we're moving fast, we're innovating fast. But it's because as a global community we're able to have access to all this information and I think following this, following this feeling, following this collaborative atmosphere I think is just going to take us further and it's, it's really exciting to see what's going to happen in 2026.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I have to say that, you know, I've been like in the, I'm been like not too much away from what you've been in the community. Like I started in 2024 and you know, it's grown like a lot. I can send from you know, finnos weekly especially, but in general like a lot of growth in 2020, 2025 especially.
So it's like only been a year when we have been like fully operating with a little bit of, you know, resources and a little bit of, let's say an idea of okay, what the hell am I doing? Because 2024 was like, yeah, I'll test this one out and see what's going on and you know, doing things, one things or the other. And now it's like, okay, this is getting big and let's see how we grow.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: So it's like what's how 2026 is going to end and you know, all the things that we need to go through in 2026. It's going to be, you know, amazing. I am super looking forward on what's going to result right.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: For like toward the end of 2025 and thinking into 2026. I mean just even things that I'm thinking about now is like seeing like just GPU costs and tracking GPU costs and not just compute and creating governance around GPU and like also our data, like our data ready architecture. That's like a huge focus I think for 2026 as well. Making sure our data is clear and ready.
And I think kind of focus kind of brings that into the conversation even more so now, which is great because especially with AI kind of messing around with costs, it's going to be essential now more than ever that our architecture is data ready and it's accurate and clear among teams.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Yeah. So I wanted to, you know, ask you a question that I was thinking why that was like seeing myself in the, in the mirror. It's like, you know, what would you ask, let's say Santa for, for 2026 in, in phenoms, what present or what a gift would you like to, to receive from, from phenops in, in 2026?
[00:33:00] Speaker B: That's so funny. I, I really, really hope it. Oh my gosh. Let me think, let me think real quick. Yeah, this is important because I, I mean like Santa's got a lot of work to do. So I, I have to be careful on what I ask for.
I mean I Hope that in2026 my wish is that we have a clear AI pipeline that actually helps with detecting waste but also providing opportunities for remediation. And like I really hope in 2026 we see this come more to the front. Cloud efficiency really taking that next step into complex finops practices where we're not just doing cost allocation and tagging, finding idle EC2 instances. We're really my wish for 2026 is that we're getting deeper and we really own cost optimization and cloud efficiency in a more intricate way because that's the next step. Step. Right. Like it's like we're. And we're already seeing it. The finops is maturing and yeah, my hope is that we're really, we start focusing on that shift toward cloud efficiency and that really complex waste opportunities.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: Okay. I think that's a great wish. I think you. It wasn't.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: It's a lot. It might be a big ask but yeah, I think it's possible.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: Let's try and see if, you know, Santa delivers on. On 2026 and I think it was, you know, very difficult question, but I thought, you know, this, this episode deserves one of these.
So I think that's a very good point to, to end. Thanks Alexa, for, for being here today and I hope you had a great time and you know, looking forward to see what 2026 brings us and what Santa brings us in Christmas.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I can't wait. Can't wait to do it again next year.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
Pleasure to talk and see you in the next episode. Bye Bye.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Bye.
