Separating cloud scale from cloud sense

Jeremy Chaplin at Flexera explores the trends and technologies that will define cloud strategy for the rest of the year and beyond

 

As the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill moves closer to implementation, UK organisations face rising pressure to demonstrate that their digital estates are secure, visible, and governed with clarity. This expectation lands as cloud, SaaS, and AI services have expanded rapidly throughout the first half of the year, compounding operational risk across business environments.

 

In this climate, digital progress is no longer measured by speed or scale alone. With regulatory pressure mounting and attack surfaces widening, control and accountability are becoming leading markers of success. Cloud maturity will be measured not by spend, but by how clearly services align with strategy, how transparently they are managed, and how confidently teams can respond to change.

 

Scaling responsibly begins with gaining visibility across the whole business’s IT environment, knowing what systems are running, how they support operations, and where oversight needs to be sharpened for both compliance and risk reduction.

 

 

Visibility remains the gap

Many organisations still lack a holistic view of their IT environment. As IT estates expand, that lack of visibility creates vulnerabilities, both operational and financial. 

 

For example, as IT systems move into production without full clarity on ownership or oversight, critical data becomes fragmented across teams, tools, and contracts.

 

That fragmentation exposes IT teams to issues and potential fines. Flexera’s latest State of ITAM report shows that 45% of organisations have paid audit penalties exceeding $1.3 million over the past three years. 

 

These are not isolated incidents, but broader symptoms of gaps in coordination that arise when renewal clauses aren’t tracked, entitlement records go unchecked, or when finance teams don’t have access to the same information as other departments.

 

SaaS subscriptions have added another layer of complexity, with many businesses lacking a consistent process for reviewing usage and ownership.  Nearly a quarter of current SaaS spend is now underutilised, with renewals frequently triggered without review as subscriptions are often purchased for specific projects but remain active long after they’re needed.

 

In this perspective, visibility needs to be treated as an ongoing capability that supports better decisions across the lifecycle of a service, to both avoid waste and improve control. 

 

 

FinOps is shaping alignment 

Throughout 2025, FinOps has become more embedded in the day-to-day rhythm of business planning, providing a structured way to manage cloud spend through shared accountability between finance, IT, and operational teams. The shift has moved it from a technical discipline into a broader framework for how infrastructure, cost, and governance decisions are made.

 

More organisations are aligning FinOps with IT asset management, helping to consolidate processes and improve the way IT resources are tracked. Across Europe, that number has grown from 29% to 43% in the past year.

 

This represents a change in how decisions are made across the business, with financial insight becoming part of the planning process. Where this alignment is in place, teams can act earlier to flag risks and avoid surprises in the next quarter. They can build forecasts on clearer assumptions and reduce the need for reactive course correction.

 

In practice, this means cloud investment can be managed more deliberately. Growth becomes sustainable when visibility and control are built in from the get-go.

 

 

AI puts pressure on governance

AI has quickly become a permanent fixture in enterprise infrastructure. More than 70% of organisations are now using or experimenting with cloud-based services to support AI initiatives.

 

The challenge is that many of these deployments went live before governance models were ready. AI agents often bypass cost tagging, sit outside existing FinOps practices, and are not consistently tracked for usage or spend. This means that oversight remains uneven, and in many cases, AI services are not held to the same operational standards as the rest of the environment.

 

This is now prompting a reset. Instead of retrofitting policies after the fact, organisations are starting to bring AI infrastructure into scope for FinOps, ITAM, and ESG teams, embedding it in the same frameworks that already support cloud and SaaS.

 

That integration is key to scaling AI safely and responsibly, ensuring initiatives are accountable from the outset, protected from regulatory risk, and aligned with the same clarity expected across the wider cloud estate.

 

 

Cloud sense will define the future

The remainder of 2025 will be shaped by how well organisations adapt. Knowing how much is being spent on cloud services is part of the picture; however, when costs are attributed to specific products, services or customer experiences, senior teams can prioritise investments based on performance and make better decisions about where to scale or cut back. This shifts the focus from how much cloud is used to what value it delivers.

 

What sets organisations apart now is not the scale of their transformation, but the sense with which they manage it. Organisations that embed cost visibility, accountability and attribution into their delivery practices will be better positioned to ensure cloud remains a driver of value rather than a drain on resources.  

 

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Jeremy Chaplin is Director, Solutions Architecture & Advisory (Cloud/FinOps) at Flexera

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and Donny DBM