The current state of cloud adoption often feels less like optimisation and more like “cloud chaos” – a challenge recently addressed in a high-level roundtable discussion. Hosted by TechCentral in partnership with Crayon and SoftwareOne, the event, Cloud Chaos Theory: From Spend Anxiety to Economic Clarity, brought together diverse IT leaders to explore the critical factors driving unexpected cloud costs and strategies for achieving genuine financial clarity.

Crayon, a full-service consulting company, advocates for customers by providing scalable advisory services and cloud solutions designed to maximise the value of IT investments. The merger of Crayon and SoftwareOne, currently in its integration phase, combines three organisations recognised as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for software asset management (SAM) managed services and cost optimisation. Together, they form a major global hyperscaler partner, leveraging global experience within the local market.

As part of its broader cloud value framework, Crayon also supports organisations through offerings such as the Google Workspace Economics Assessment and Google Cloud optimisation services.

Framing the challenge: low visibility and waste

The discussion began with a clear observation: cloud chaos isn’t fundamentally about high bills, but about low visibility and poor orchestration. Data shows that up to 32% of cloud budgets are wasted each year, primarily due to idle or underutilised resources and overprovisioning. Furthermore, 54% of this waste stems from a failure to effectively track spending.

Many organisations admitted they often end up with multicloud environments by accident or default, without a clear strategy – leading to escalating costs where they expected savings. The group agreed that addressing this challenge requires planning, skills and capability development, supported by visibility solutions that bring cost and performance into an organisational context.

Root causes and accountability gaps

Participants examined the root causes of budgetary overruns, which typically fall into two categories: technical waste (such as unused virtual machines) and process waste (such as unclear ownership or hand-offs). The tension between developers being urged to “move fast” and finance teams being tasked to “control costs” – a DevOps versus FinOps conflict – was highlighted as a major pain point.

This misalignment persists because engineers often design for performance, not cost efficiency, while CIOs have ceded some control due to the ease of modern deployment. The issue of fractured visibility underscored a broader problem: identifying who truly owns the cost of cloud workloads.

The consensus was that ownership is as cultural as it is technical. To overcome the outdated perception of IT as a back-office support function, organisations must ensure that CIOs hold a strategic position at executive level, integrating IT strategy with business objectives. As one delegate put it: “Technology is the business.”

Effective governance and collaboration across chief financial officer, CIO and business-owner silos – supported by models such as chargeback and cost-to-serve metrics – are essential for accountability and value realisation.

The next wave of FinOps maturity

To move beyond basic tagging and reporting, the conversation shifted to the next wave of FinOps – or FinOps 2.0. This evolved stage focuses on policy-driven orchestration (automated guardrails), pre-deployment financial simulations and, crucially, linking cloud spend to measurable business key performance indicators.

The discussion emphasised that achieving FinOps maturity is not just about technology but about creating a culture of accountability that extends beyond technical metrics.

From spend problems to orchestration gaps

The roundtable concluded with a shared recognition that most spend problems are, at their core, orchestration gaps – whether between teams, processes or technologies. To help organisations address these challenges in a structured way, Crayon and SoftwareOne support clients through FinOps maturity assessments that benchmark current practices and identify key optimisation areas, as well as orchestration workshops that guide leadership teams in establishing governance models, accountability frameworks and clearer cost-to-value visibility. For organisations running significant Google Cloud workloads, Crayon’s Google Workspace Economics Assessment and Google Cloud cost-optimisation frameworks provide a structured pathway to reduce waste and improve financial governance. These engagements form part of an ongoing process to embed financial discipline, strengthen collaboration, and achieve long-term clarity in cloud strategy. Contact the Crayon team to set these up: Max du Bois via e-mail [email protected] or on +971-4-249-1996.