The 5th Annual State of FinOps Survey - Key Highlights

Recently, we were given the 5th Annual State of FinOps survey results (carried out by the FinOps Foundation) so what better time to reflect and review where we are headed?  This year’s results represent $69B of Cloud Spend, $32B of which is SaaS spend, so let get into it. 

What are our current priorities? 

It’s no surprise that Workload Optimisation and Waste Reduction are the top priorities for FinOps practitioners as it is quite clear the focus is still on reducing spend whilst maintaining optimum value.  It is worth noting that Workload Optimisation was also a top priority for 2024.  The full allocation of cloud spending and Accurate forecasting were the next two top priorities aligning with what Synyega is finding in the market. Organisations are commonly finding challenges around allocation that are blocking their ability to mature other parts of FinOps successfully. It’s worth noting, however, that these two capabilities were quite significantly less than the top priority.      

Fascinatingly, the results show that a massive 63% of respondents (861 total respondents) are managing AI spend, this has increased by 32% from 2024, along with further investments in SaaS and Datacentres.  The question from these results would be if FinOps Practitioners are at risk of burnout as they are being asked to do more with the same level of resource.  Staffing and acquiring talent came out as the lowest priority, which backs up the thought that FinOps Practitioners are being stretched, something we’re seeing in almost all organisations we work with. 

Where are we headed? 

Now for the most interesting part, what does the next 12 months look like?  FinOps Governance & policy has become the number 1 priority within the next year.  The FinOps Foundation believes (and I agree) that this is most likely a result of the workload optimisation maturity increasing, as that has been the top focus.  Optimisaton is seen as the second top priority, still up there, however, reduced by 21% against current priorities. Organisations are seeing that the long-term way to be successful in workload optimisation is to avoid wastage in the first place, and as such good policy and governance are key to this. Could 2025 be the year we see a rise in the use of Governance/Policy Engines in FinOps? 

Managing AI/Machine Learning spend has jumped up four places against current priorities, no surprises there as if you remember there has been a large increase in practitioners managing AI spend compared to last year.  Managing costs beyond cloud follows a similar pattern as investments are increasing across SaaS & Data Centres. 

Getting to Unit Economics was seen as more of a priority this year (jumping 5 places from current priorities) which I think goes hand in hand with what practitioners need to achieve success, which I will go into next. 

How do we achieve success? 

The most vital path to success is still Organisation alignment.  Having organisational alignment means buy-in from a variety of areas within the business and aligning goals to enable collaboration.  Additionally, Investment & Tooling has increased by 20% this is most likely due to the workload of practitioners expanding.  Both organisational alignment and Investment & Tooling make up 77% of what is needed to achieve top priorities with Improving Capabilities at 22% and Other at 4%.  

(Image taken from : State of FinOps 2025- FinOps Foundation) 

The survey of 2025 brought out clear signs that FinOps teams are starting to manage other technology spend of things like SaaS, Licensing, Private Cloud & Data Centre – which are deemed as additional scopes.  There is the expectation that SaaS will go from 40% to 65% relating to additional areas of technology spend that Practitioners are responsible for.  It is no wonder that Investment and tooling are so wanted when the areas of scopes are expanding.   

It was very interesting to hear that more than half of Practitioners are planning to use FOCUS in the next twelve months, with the majority planning to have it automatically integrated into data pipeline.  There are still hurdles that exist relating to FOCUS, but more to follow on that on Synyega TV where we will dive into the blockers around using FOCUS for granular data. 

Round up 

One thing that remains clear to me is the strong desire from companies to optimise usage and reduce wastage within the cloud.  As FinOps Practitioners are being looked at to manage additional technology spend, staffing and talent acquisition continue to be a low priority, meaning Practitioners may be being stretched too thin.  Looking ahead, FinOps governance and policy have appeared as the number one priority for the next year, alongside continued importance on optimisation and managing AI/ML spend.