What does FinOps look like in highly regulated industries — and why is speed so critical when managing commitments and anomalies?
In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sat down with Gordon Douglass, VP of Cloud Assets & Risk Management at SAP NS2, to talk about the real-world challenges of running FinOps in government and enterprise-scale environments.
Gordon shares why commitments are one of the scariest parts of FinOps, how to balance anomaly detection with meaningful action, and what it means to wear “many hats” as a FinOps leader. He also explains how regulations, procurement, and engineering collaboration add layers of complexity — and how to navigate them successfully.
Here’s what we talked about:
- Why commitments can make or break FinOps strategy
- How to balance speed and accuracy in anomaly detection
- What FinOps looks like in regulated industries like government cloud
- The “many hats” of a FinOps practitioner and leader
- Lessons from SAP NS2’s approach to cloud cost management
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Quote of the Show:
"We have regular cadences both internally within my group itself in addition to that also with engineering and operations, just to see and make sure that they understand or can justify what's going on. " - Gordon DouglassLinks:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gordondouglass/
- Website: https://sapns2.com/
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- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t
- Substack: https://finopsinaction.substack.com/
- Transistor: finopsinaction.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PointFiveCloudCostEfficiency
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