CloudBolt and StormForge Partner to Bring a Comprehensive Kubernetes Solution to FinOps

CloudBolt Software announced the launch of a new strategic partnership with StormForge, a leading provider of Kubernetes resource optimization. The companies are working together with the goal of bringing Kubernetes cost visibility and optimization into the FinOps ecosystem, giving organizations the alignment and agency they need across engineering and FinOps to maximize their return on cloud investments.

According to a survey by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Kubernetes is used in 96% of global businesses. Public cloud adoption continues to accelerate, and the enterprise “lift and shift” pattern for cloud migrations is being replaced with a focus on modernization. However, 69% of organizations either do not monitor Kubernetes spending at all or rely on monthly estimates. 

While the FinOps industry has had success providing cost visibility and optimization recommendations at the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) layer, it has not yet delivered the same value in Kubernetes ecosystems. The pervasive target for all new workloads is therefore a cost-efficiency black box, and as a result, monthly Kubernetes costs can spiral into tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for medium to large enterprises. 

Without any form of monitoring, organizations remain unaware of actual spend and over-allocated cloud resources. Calculating Kubernetes costs using manual methods is time-consuming and often inaccurate, providing little insight into the root causes behind cost increases. As a result, platform and FinOps teams are siloed and starved of insights that would inform meaningful action. 

The integration of StormForge’s intelligent machine learning capabilities with CloudBolt’s Augmented FinOps offerings is intended to deliver full Kubernetes cost visibility, with detailed cost allocation against real-time performance metrics and fully automated Kubernetes optimization.

By adopting the new joint solution, users can benefit from:

• Complete shared cost distribution-CloudOps teams can align with FinOps teams for showback/chargeback that accurately allocates costs based on real container-level performance data to create non-contested attribution. 
• Continuous rightsizing-Practitioners will have the ability to dramatically reduce insight-to-action lead time through continuous Kubernetes optimization. 
• Improved cloud ROI-Kubernetes clusters can be included into cost visibility and optimization workflows that have previously been isolated from the rest of cloud spend.

“Kubernetes users have not had a path to maximize their cloud ROI with the market’s lack of a cohesive solution to inform, optimize, and automate Kubernetes cost reporting. We’re excited to close that loop by seamlessly integrating our ML-driven, automated Kubernetes optimization with CloudBolt’s Augmented FinOps platform,” said Yasmin Rajabi, StormForge’s VP of product. 

“As Kubernetes adoption continues to accelerate, costs have exploded and foundational FinOps capabilities like chargeback and container level visibility prove to be difficult or absent altogether, and rarely result in optimization,” said Kyle Campos, CloudBolt’s chief technology and product officer. “This strategic partnership will empower Kubernetes users with ML-based FinOps capabilities to effectively manage Kubernetes expenditure by not only delivering cost visibility, allocation, and rightsizing recommendations, but also natively orchestrating the execution of those recommendations against Kubernetes clusters.”