Nordcloud, an IBM Company

You’re responsible for cloud costs. But you can’t see them. And you can’t change them. That’s not ownership. That’s frustration. This is something I see quite often when organisations start with FinOps. Responsibility gets assigned. But the people who are expected to “own” costs don’t have: • the visibility • the context • or the ability to act And then we wonder why nothing changes. Or worse - why it turns into a blame game. FinOps isn’t supposed to work like that. If ownership comes without agency, it doesn’t create accountability. It creates disengagement. People stop caring. Or they push responsibility somewhere else. What actually changes things is much simpler: Give teams visibility into what they’re running. Help them understand the impact of their decisions. That’s when something clicks. Costs stop being abstract. And start becoming something you can act on. In this part of Cloud Core Talks, I sat down with Jake McCracken to talk about where this breaks, and what actually helps teams move from awareness to action. Part 3 of Episode 1 is now live! Jake McCracken #FinOps #CloudCosts #NordcloudNinjas

A lot of FinOps conversations focus on tooling. Dashboards. Reports. Optimisation recommendations. Useful? Absolutely. Enough? Not really. Because FinOps doesn’t usually break because data is missing. It breaks because teams don’t work together. One of the patterns I keep seeing: Finance has one view. Engineering has another. Product teams have their own priorities. And cloud cost often sits somewhere in between - visible, but not always shared. So even when the data exists, progress slows down. Not because people don’t care. But because ownership, visibility and accountability aren’t aligned. What tends to work better is much simpler. Start small. Make cost visible to the right people. Celebrate small wins. Build trust between teams. Create conversations around why something costs what it costs. Because once people understand the impact of their decisions, behaviour starts to shift naturally. That’s usually where real progress begins. Not with bigger dashboards. But with better collaboration. In this part of Cloud Core Talks, I sat down with Jake McCracken to talk about what actually helps FinOps move from theory into something teams can genuinely work with. Part 4 of Episode 1 is now live! Jake McCracken #FinOps #CloudCosts #NordcloudNinjas

One of the biggest misconceptions I hear about FinOps is that you need everything in place before you start. The perfect cloud environment. Perfect tagging. Perfect governance. Perfect visibility. In reality, if you’re waiting for perfect, you’ll probably be waiting forever. Some of the most successful FinOps journeys I’ve seen started in environments that were anything but perfect. Legacy workloads. Years of accumulated technical decisions. Limited visibility. No clear ownership. And yet, meaningful progress still happened. Not because someone launched a massive transformation programme. But because they started small. Visibility. Ownership. A few quick wins. An internal champion willing to push things forward. The other thing I’ve learned is that FinOps looks different everywhere. What works in a startup won’t necessarily work in the public sector. What works in a private company won’t necessarily work in a government organisation. The goal isn’t to copy someone else’s model. It’s to understand what motivates change in your own organisation. At the end of the day, FinOps isn’t about reports. It’s not about dashboards. And it’s definitely not about producing numbers nobody acts on. If it’s not driving action, it’s not doing its job. In the final part of Cloud Core Talks Episode 1, I sat down with Jake McCracken to discuss what actually helps organisations move from good intentions to meaningful change. 👏 Part 5 of Episode 1 is now live 👇 Jake McCracken #FinOps #CloudCosts #CloudFinancialManagement #NordcloudNinjas

Your cloud strategy probably didn’t expect geopolitics to join the architecture discussion. But here we are 🤷♀️. Digital sovereignty is no longer sitting quietly in compliance conversations. It’s now tied to business continuity. Control. Risk. Dependency. Long-term flexibility. And for many organisations, the hard part isn’t awareness anymore. It’s making the right decisions without overcomplicating everything. That’s exactly what we’re unpacking at our upcoming Breakfast Panel: Digital Sovereignty – Making confident cloud decisions in a shifting world ☕👇 🗓️ 10 June 📍 IBM Innovation Studio, Amsterdam Together with experts from Nordcloud, AWS, Microsoft and IBM, we’ll get into the harder questions: ➡️ What sovereignty actually means beyond regulation ➡️ Why “EU region” doesn’t automatically equal control ➡️ How geopolitics is reshaping cloud dependency ➡️ Where resilience, portability and operational independence start to matter ➡️ How to make cloud decisions that still hold up when the world doesn’t sit still No fear-driven narratives. No generic cloud slides. Just practical perspectives grounded in real advisory and delivery work. Joining the conversation: 🥷 Lysa Banks 🥷 Sander Nieuwenhuis 🥷 Charles Whitton ☁️ 🥷 Erwin Roland Nederlof® 🥷 Susheel Gooly If digital sovereignty is moving onto your leadership, risk or cloud agenda - this one’s worth breakfast. https://lnkd.in/dgBxJqhe #NordcloudNinjas #DigitalSovereignty #CloudStrategy #BusinessContinuity #AWS #Azure #HybridCloud

Some cloud decisions can wait. This one probably can’t. Because digital sovereignty is no longer a side conversation. It’s influencing resilience. Control. Dependency. Business continuity. And long-term decisions leaders need to get right. On 10 June in Amsterdam, we’re bringing together experts from Nordcloud, AWS, Microsoft and IBM for a practical panel on Digital Sovereignty: Making confident cloud decisions in a shifting world. We’ll get into the harder questions organisations are actively navigating right now: ➡️ Where control actually matters ➡️ Why “EU region” doesn’t automatically equal sovereignty ➡️ How geopolitics is reshaping cloud dependency ➡️ What trade-offs emerge between agility, resilience and long-term flexibility ➡️ When complexity is worth it,and when it isn’t No generic cloud talk. No fear-driven narratives. Just practical perspectives from people working with these decisions every day. Joining the discussion: 🥷 Lysa Banks 🥷 Sander Nieuwenhuis 🥷 Charles Whitton ☁️ 🥷 Erwin Roland Nederlof® 🥷 Susheel Gooly The market is shifting. Regulation is shifting. Risk assumptions are shifting. Cloud decisions are shifting with them. 📍 IBM Innovation Studio, Amsterdam 🗓️ 10 June ➡️ https://lnkd.in/daCs_fBc If digital sovereignty is anywhere near your cloud, risk or leadership agenda - this is probably a room you’ll want to be in. #NordcloudNinjas #DigitalSovereignty #CloudStrategy #BusinessContinuity #AWS #Azure #HybridCloud

Digital sovereignty is a topic with a lot of urgency, and not much direction. In most organisations, IT and the business are working from different definitions of what sovereignty even means without clear alignment or common understanding. As my colleague @Sander explains in the clip below, two things make the difference. The first is getting your stakeholders in one room. There's a lot of confusion out there, and a fair bit of fake news and assumptions. Sovereignty means different things to different people, and most teams haven't agreed on what it means for them. Moreover, in the discussions sovereignty is often reduced into all or nothing type of decision without really taking a look at the requirements, needs, and possible approaches. The second is staying current on what's happening in the market. Hyperscalers providing services to cover digital sovereignty better to meet the customer requirements. The options today aren't the same as a year ago, and you don't want to plan against an old picture. We’re running a free AWS workshop on this. A few hours, the right people in the room, and a clear view of where you stand. If you’ve been stuck on this, it’s a good place to start. Book the workshop: https://lnkd.in/dFjn5x83 #digitalsovereignty #europeansovereigncloud #awseuropeansovereigncloud #aws #cloudinnovation #nordcloudbytes Nordcloud, an IBM Company