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Managing AI Costs with Sonia Cuff

Mar 19, 2025
In this engaging conversation, Sonja Cuff, a Senior Cloud Ops Advocate on the Azure engineering team, shares her expertise in managing AI costs. She clarifies that AI encompasses more than just large language models. The discussion dives into practical strategies for measuring AI expenditures and improving sustainability using FinOps models. Topics like aligning IT spending with business benefits and the intricacies of app development optimization are explored, while the significance of realistic expectations in the evolving AI landscape is emphasized.
37:28

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Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

  • Understanding AI's diverse applications is essential for effective cost management, highlighting the need for collaboration between IT and finance teams.
  • Implementing the FinOps framework enables organizations to gain visibility into AI-related expenditures, optimizing cloud strategies and justifying technology investments.

Deep dives

Managing AI Costs

AI represents a new workload that requires effective management regarding security and cost allocation. IT professionals are realizing that the fundamentals of cost awareness remain essential, facilitating discussions with finance teams, such as the CIO or CTO, to ensure that AI expenses are justifiable. Critical considerations include determining data storage locations and managing the associated costs of virtual machines and API calls, leading to better understanding of resource usage. As organizations navigate the early stages of AI adoption, they are beginning to confront financial implications more seriously, even while many AI solutions are still in their exploratory phases.

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