The Department of Defense has made its Cloud Financial Operations Strategy publicly available.
The purpose of the DOD Cloud FinOps strategy is to provide the agency a framework to better manage and optimize cloud costs to, in turn, improve architectural, budgetary and investment decision-making, Leslie Beavers, acting DOD chief information officer and 2024 Wash100 Award winner, said in a memorandum.
“It establishes a way ahead that will allow the Department to be a better user and buyer of cloud services,” Beavers added.
The strategy says that the DOD needs to improve its acquisition of cloud services, because cloud adoption is a fundamental component of modernization, and modernization is made necessary by the increasing digitalization of warfare.
Improving acquisition is also necessary because of rising cloud costs and tightening military budgets.
To help with this effort, the strategy “describes a desired outcome, provides a DoD-tailored FinOps framework, and identifies strategic imperatives and associated actions to enable an enterprise understanding of cloud cost and impact.”
Its implementation will be overseen by the Enterprise Cloud Management Board.