The honeymoon of "unlimited cloud" is over. CFOs are now demanding absolute transparency and accountability for cloud spending. "FinOps" has evolved from a niche practice to a core business competency.
Most organizations are still leaving 30-40% of their cloud budget on the table through:
* **Unused Reserved Instances:** Buying capacity that isn't actually utilized.
* **Over-Provisioning:** Assigning more compute power than the workload requires "just in case."
* **Zombie Assets:** Detached storage volumes and forgotten development environments that continue to accrue costs.
Predictive analytics and automated "shut-down" scripts are the new standard for modern cloud financial management.
Cost Optimization Strategies for 2026
