The FP&A Guide to Winning at Cloud Financial Management – Jeff Duresky at AWS

7 snips

Oct 10, 2023

Jeff Duresky, Senior FinOps Commercial Architect at Amazon AWS, discusses cloud financial management and its importance for FP&A. He shares insights on trading fixed expenses for variable expenses in the cloud, common cost language, cloud forecasting, cost reductions, and core metrics. The episode also touches on challenges with budget inheritance, the significance of finance and engineering collaboration in cloud forecasting, and the importance of note-taking and learning from other companies in cloud finance.

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Episode notes

Introduction

00:00 • 3min

Challenges with Budget Inheritance

02:59 • 5min

Cloud Financial Management and its Role in FP&A

07:33 • 21min

The Significance of Finance and Engineering Collaboration in Cloud Forecasting

28:18 • 3min

Forecasting Cloud Costs for Improved Accuracy and Efficiency

31:18 • 17min

Meeting a Historical Figure and Accounting Research

47:54 • 2min

Seasonality in Retail, Formatting Features in Excel, and Advice for FP&A Professionals

49:50 • 3min

The Importance of Note-taking and Learning from Other Companies in Cloud Finance

52:35 • 2min

Worldwide spend on cloud infrastructure hit a staggering $169 billion in 2022 with Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) combined, accounting for 62 percent of the cloud market share. In its first quarter of this year revenue from AWS totaled $21.35 billion, representing almost 17% of Amazon’s overall revenue. What lessons can we learn from within AWS about effective cloud financial management? How can FP&A teams better understand this complex line item? We are joined by Jeff Duresky, Senior FinOps Commercial Architect, Amazon AWS. He is a finance leader who supports the cloud leader’s largest and most strategic customers – and has also held strategic FP&A roles at companies including Capital One.

“As a finance professional the more you understand cloud, the better the insights you’ll be able to drive” – Jeff Duresky

In this episode

Jeff’s worst budget experience (aka professional service accrual releases).
The link between cloud financial management and FP&A
trading fixed expenses in cloud
Smart decisions related to cloud expenditures and management
Common cost language – how to get it right
Secrets to cloud forecasting
Promoting the best finance and engineering team conversations around the cloud
Finding reductions in costs for cloud users
Core metrics to assess and unit costs (cost per gigabyte, cost per instance)
First steps to begin forecasting cloud costs
My biggest finance strategic moment
The last finance thing I googled
The importance of taking notes in a career in FP&A

Notes

How to establish and drive a forecasting culture

How to talk about cloud with a non-cloud audience (business partnering)

The Key to AWS Optimization

Follow and connect with Jeff Duresky on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffduresky/

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