Apptio unveils FinOps tools as AI spend nears USD $571 billion

Apptio has announced a suite of new FinOps features intended to provide cloud leaders with improved visibility to optimise cloud costs in increasingly complex, AI-driven environments.

The company's new offerings coincide with a significant surge in AI-related investment, as enterprises worldwide accelerate development and adoption of artificial intelligence technologies. According to IDC, global enterprise spending on AI infrastructure is forecast to reach USD $571 billion in 2026. However, effective management of these investments is a pressing concern among technology and business leaders.

Research conducted by Apptio found that 55% of business leaders surveyed believe they lack the necessary information to evaluate technology expenditure with adequate insight. This problem is further underlined in Australia, where as many as four out of five AI projects fail to move beyond the pilot phase, resulting in significant resource depletion without corresponding returns. This context has placed increased pressure on IT decision makers to assess the effectiveness of AI spending and ensure value is delivered in line with business expectations.

FinOps framework

FinOps, or Financial Operations, is an operational framework intended to provide organisations with real-time visibility, financial accountability, and enhanced management of cloud costs. The goal is to maximise business value and foster collaboration between technology and business functions. Apptio's latest release builds on this framework, offering solutions that the company says enable proactive and predictive cost management across cloud environments.

"Generative AI is not only pushing the limits of cloud infrastructure; it's challenging the ability of technology and business leaders to make informed decisions and evaluate tech spend ROI. The AI era is one of information and compute-power overload," said Eugene Khvostov, Chief Product Officer at Apptio. "So, it's imperative for organisations to gain control over their cloud and data estate. That's the first step in harnessing the AI opportunity and exactly what our new FinOps solutions are designed to address - proactive, and predictive cloud cost management."

Cloudability Governance details

One of the core components of this release is Cloudability Governance. Backed by IBM's Cloudability platform and integrated with HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP) and HashiCorp Terraform, Cloudability Governance is designed to give FinOps teams and engineers greater control over cloud infrastructure deployments.

Key features of Cloudability Governance include automating compliance monitoring, applying defined organisational policy within engineering workflows, and providing centralised state management and secure execution. The system also supports team collaboration, which can help ensure consistent provisioning and reduce risk across cloud environments.

Customised cost estimates and financial guardrails are embedded, supporting teams to stay within budget and make proactive infrastructure decisions. Near real-time visibility into cloud costs is available after deployment, together with AI-powered recommendations to surface waste reduction opportunities, potentially even before new infrastructure is provisioned. Teams can also detect anomalies, track spend against budgets, and validate decisions based on detailed billing data.

"Our customers want accurate, real-time visibility into the cost implications of the infrastructure they manage and deploy with HashiCorp Terraform," said Armon Dadgar, CTO and co-founder of HashiCorp, an IBM company. "With native bi-directional integration between HashiCorp Terraform and Cloudability, engineers gain visibility into infrastructure costs, embedded governance checks, and optimisation opportunities directly within their workflows."

Kubecost 3.0

Another major announcement is Kubecost 3.0, the latest evolution of the company's Kubernetes cost management platform. Kubecost 3.0 includes unified resource management tools, providing a consolidated view of clusters for streamlined cost allocation and resource utilisation.

The solution delivers advanced and comprehensive savings recommendations, including automated container right-sizing, enhanced GPU monitoring and optimisation leveraging NVIDIA's DCGM exporter, and improved node group sizing. The upgrade also brings scalability and security improvements, supporting organisations to grow Kubernetes deployments while maintaining secure and controlled environments.

These capabilities are intended to help engineering and FinOps teams rapidly identify inefficiencies, optimise spending, and reduce operational waste in containerised environments.

Cloudability Governance's integration with HCP and Terraform Enterprise is offered as a public preview, while Kubecost 3.0 is now generally available to enterprises.