If you’ve ever found yourself staring at a cloud bill that could buy a small island or at least a very nice car, you're not alone. Believe me, at Cribl, we've had our share of those "molotov cocktail" bills that make our CFO, Zach, look like he's about to spontaneously combust. And yeah, a few F-bombs might have dropped from various senior leaders (myself included, I won't lie).
One particularly memorable moment was when we totally fumbled the ball on understanding a service's pricing. We ran a couple of tests, thinking we were being clever, and BAM! The bill came in at about 10x what we expected. "Sorry, Zach!" became my new mantra that week. While the misunderstanding was on us, it’s ridiculously easy to do. But it shouldn’t be. We believe customers deserve choice, control, and flexibility that extends to their pricing. That’s precisely why we’re putting our money where our mouth is and making it easier for our own customers to track their spend with our shiny new FinOps Center in Cribl.Cloud.
New tools and cool dashboards are great, but let's be real, they're just the first step. You can have the fanciest dashboard in the world, but if you don't change your processes, you're just polishing a turd. True FinOps magic happens when engineering and finance collaborate with each other, not just CFOs and CTOs exchanging strained pleasantries.
It’s not about just slashing costs; it’s about making sure every R&D dollar we spend delivers maximal value. Zach isn't about to tell me which tests our engineers should run or whether to spin up a virtual machine (and trust me, I'm not giving him tax advice). Instead, it’s about everyone grasping how their work drives real outcomes and if it’s truly worth the cost. Luckily, he was game enough to give every single employee a crash course in unit economics—he even flew to Poland to teach it personally!
The good news is that with some focused attention this problem is solvable. In R&D, our goal is to build products that transform telemetry for our customers. Doing so means we have to make sure every dollar we spend goes as far as possible to maximize the value we create. And we’re not the only ones; Deloitte predicts a cool $21 billion may be saved by companies just in 2025 by embracing FinOps tools and practices. That number is only going to grow, so get on board!
What’s been our secret sauce for success? Focused attention driven by our FinOps champions program, hands down. We’ve got a dedicated squad of "spend captains" who pore over the cloud costs attributed to the Engineering organization every single week. Their mission: to ensure those costs are not just understood, but directly tied to value. This initiative has been a game-changer, leading us to tag every single resource. Now, our engineering leaders can easily see what they spend and, more importantly, take ownership.
As we walk the talk ourselves, we want to share what we’ve learned with our customers. FinOps Center is the first step to helping our customers achieve the same clarity and control over their data with Cribl.
