Apptio launches FinOps tools to manage rising AI cloud costs

Apptio has announced the launch of new FinOps solutions, IBM Cloudability and IBM Kubecost, aimed at helping organisations manage and optimise spending within complex, AI-driven cloud environments.

These solutions are intended to address the growing challenges enterprises face as they expand their use of AI and cloud technologies, particularly in regions like Singapore where enterprise AI adoption has increased significantly in recent years.

Cloud cost challenges

Singapore has seen enterprise AI adoption climb from 44% to 62.5%, yet many organisations continue to struggle with gaining visibility into increasing cloud expenditure. While the country ranks second globally in AI readiness and leads the Asia-Pacific region in governance and regulatory preparation, a lack of enhanced spending visibility still poses a risk to both cost optimisation and the broader benefits AI can bring to productivity and competitiveness.

An Apptio study found that 55% of surveyed business leaders do not have sufficient information to evaluate technology spending effectively. International Data Corporation (IDC) has estimated that enterprise investments in AI infrastructure could reach USD $571 billion globally by 2026, further underscoring the scale and urgency of this issue.

FinOps framework

FinOps, short for Financial Operations, has emerged as a framework for addressing financial blind spots in cloud technology adoption. It aims to give organisations real-time cloud cost visibility, improve financial accountability, and maximise both collaboration and value creation. The new solutions from Apptio are designed to support these objectives on a practical level.

"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

The new Cloudability Governance feature is designed to offer proactive, automated control across multi-cloud environments. It is backed by Cloudability and integrated with HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP) and HashiCorp Terraform to help FinOps teams centralise state management, automate cost compliance, and enforce organisational policy during the engineering workflow.

This inclusion enables organisations to reliably scale infrastructure, implement informed policies during provisioning, and access personalised cost estimates before deployment. Near real-time visibility into actual cloud spend after deployment is provided, supported by artificial intelligence-powered recommendations to detect wastage and improve accountability.

"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. "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 enhancements

Kubecost 3.0 is presented as the most comprehensive version to date, supporting Kubernetes teams in managing resources effectively at scale. It offers tools for unified resource management, advanced recommendations for savings, and enhanced security for growing deployments. Automated container right-sizing, GPU monitoring powered by NVIDIA's DCGM exporter, and detailed node group sizing insights are among its new features. These capabilities are intended to help teams identify and address inefficiencies across workloads and maintain compliance and control even as cloud environment complexity increases.

The Cloudability Governance integration with HCP and Terraform is currently in public preview, while Kubecost 3.0 is now generally available to enterprises. Both products aim to provide end-to-end visibility and financial controls in AI-driven cloud deployments.