What is the story about?
From cloud adoption to the explosion of AI workloads, the last decade has permanently reshaped the DNA of enterprise technology. What once ran on predictable, centralised systems now spans hybrid cloud landscapes, hyperscale infrastructure, distributed applications and agile delivery pipelines. The pace of innovation is extraordinary, but so is the financial complexity that follows.
Technology is no longer just a business enabler; it is a core driver of growth, competitive differentiation, workforce productivity and customer experience. Yet many organisations, especially in India, where digital transformation is accelerating across BFSI, telecom, manufacturing, retail and the public sector, struggle to answer a deceptively simple question: Are we spending the right amount on technology, in the right places, to generate measurable business outcomes? This is where FinOps is shifting from cost governance to strategic value orchestration, and the transition is particularly urgent for India Inc., where tech spend is rising faster than global averages.
The tech spend explosion isn’t the real problem, visibility is
Indian enterprises today are no longer dealing with siloed cost centers; cloud workloads scale on demand, SaaS models proliferate across business units, and AI and data initiatives require specialised compute, talent and security frameworks, making annual technology expenditure highly variable, distributed and deeply intertwined across functions.
While CIOs and CFOs know costs are rising, many lack a single source of truth to understand where spending originates or whether it delivers value. This complexity is compounded by redundant application portfolios built over multiple transformation cycles, underutilised infrastructure and SaaS subscriptions, cloud resources that remain idle after provisioning, and AI investments that demand GPU-intensive computing.
The talent shortage, particularly in cloud FinOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), AI engineering and data science, further escalates cost unpredictability. Budget allocation models that spread investments uniformly across departments prevent the scaling of high-value digital programs, making FinOps no longer a back-office cost control function but a critical navigation system for predictable, scalable tech-driven growth.
FinOps 2.0: From cost reduction to performance management
Traditional FinOps in many organisations have centered on optimisation, chargebacks and governance. While necessary, that model is insufficient in the era of AI and cloud-native transformation. FinOps 2.0 is about linking every rupee of technology spending to business performance, in real time. This transition is becoming increasingly critical in India, where public cloud adoption continues to surge with the Indian public cloud services market projected byIDC to reach US$ 30.4 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 22.6% between 2024 and 2029. It brings operational, utilization and financial data together across hybrid landscapes and converts that data into meaningful business KPIs and outcome-based insights.
To unlock this, enterprises need modern tooling, automation and intelligence rather than spreadsheet-based analysis or periodic reporting. Platforms that unify Technology Business Management, FinOps and Enterprise Agile operating models establish a single source of truth that technology and finance teams can co-own. Once leaders can quantify spend, utilization, business alignment and outcomes with precision, conversations shift from cost-centric to value-centric. The question becomes not “Why is cloud spend rising?” but “Which investments are accelerating customer experience, revenue, innovation or resilience, and which are not?” As Indian organisations increasingly compete on digital experience rather than cost arbitrage, this shift is particularly essential.
The FinOps mandate for CIOs and CFOs: Invest for growth, not just efficiency
Indian enterprises are expanding technology budgets, but CEOs and boards now expect measurable returns in the form of agility, risk reduction, workforce productivity, monetization and innovation, and cost optimization alone cannot deliver that. The organisations pulling ahead are demonstrating three critical shifts.
First, they prioritise high-growth use cases rather than evenly distributing budgets. Not every AI or cloud program warrants equal investment, and transformative impact demands aggressive allocation toward high-value initiatives while consolidating or eliminating low-value ones, turning technology from a cost driver into a revenue engine.
Second, talent is treated as a strategic lever rather than a cost centre. India has one of the world’s most dynamic AI and cloud talent pools, yet demand still outpaces supply. Enterprises are responding by building internal talent marketplaces, investing in automation to boost productivity and partnering closely with ecosystem players including hyperscalers, GSIs and universities.
Third, FinOps is embraced as a culture rather than a process. It succeeds only when procurement, finance, DevOps, product and business units share accountability for outcomes per dollar spent. Once technology investments are tied to enterprise strategy, measured continuously and governed collaboratively, the boardroom conversation shifts from “How do we reduce tech spend?” to “How do we scale intelligently and capture market advantage?”
The big shift in 2026 and beyond
The real competitive edge in the next few years won’t come from who adopts the most technologies, but from who learns to treat technology as capital, invested with intent, measured with discipline, and redirected without hesitation. FinOps is ultimately about elevating technology from a support function to a board-level growth lever. The organisations that succeed will be the ones where CIOs, CFOs and business leaders stop asking “How much are we spending?” and start asking “What future are we funding?”
—The author, Samit Shetty, is Country Leader, Automation Platform, IBM India & South Asia. The views are personal.
Technology is no longer just a business enabler; it is a core driver of growth, competitive differentiation, workforce productivity and customer experience. Yet many organisations, especially in India, where digital transformation is accelerating across BFSI, telecom, manufacturing, retail and the public sector, struggle to answer a deceptively simple question: Are we spending the right amount on technology, in the right places, to generate measurable business outcomes? This is where FinOps is shifting from cost governance to strategic value orchestration, and the transition is particularly urgent for India Inc., where tech spend is rising faster than global averages.
The tech spend explosion isn’t the real problem, visibility is
Indian enterprises today are no longer dealing with siloed cost centers; cloud workloads scale on demand, SaaS models proliferate across business units, and AI and data initiatives require specialised compute, talent and security frameworks, making annual technology expenditure highly variable, distributed and deeply intertwined across functions.
While CIOs and CFOs know costs are rising, many lack a single source of truth to understand where spending originates or whether it delivers value. This complexity is compounded by redundant application portfolios built over multiple transformation cycles, underutilised infrastructure and SaaS subscriptions, cloud resources that remain idle after provisioning, and AI investments that demand GPU-intensive computing.
The talent shortage, particularly in cloud FinOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), AI engineering and data science, further escalates cost unpredictability. Budget allocation models that spread investments uniformly across departments prevent the scaling of high-value digital programs, making FinOps no longer a back-office cost control function but a critical navigation system for predictable, scalable tech-driven growth.
FinOps 2.0: From cost reduction to performance management
Traditional FinOps in many organisations have centered on optimisation, chargebacks and governance. While necessary, that model is insufficient in the era of AI and cloud-native transformation. FinOps 2.0 is about linking every rupee of technology spending to business performance, in real time. This transition is becoming increasingly critical in India, where public cloud adoption continues to surge with the Indian public cloud services market projected byIDC to reach US$ 30.4 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 22.6% between 2024 and 2029. It brings operational, utilization and financial data together across hybrid landscapes and converts that data into meaningful business KPIs and outcome-based insights.
To unlock this, enterprises need modern tooling, automation and intelligence rather than spreadsheet-based analysis or periodic reporting. Platforms that unify Technology Business Management, FinOps and Enterprise Agile operating models establish a single source of truth that technology and finance teams can co-own. Once leaders can quantify spend, utilization, business alignment and outcomes with precision, conversations shift from cost-centric to value-centric. The question becomes not “Why is cloud spend rising?” but “Which investments are accelerating customer experience, revenue, innovation or resilience, and which are not?” As Indian organisations increasingly compete on digital experience rather than cost arbitrage, this shift is particularly essential.
The FinOps mandate for CIOs and CFOs: Invest for growth, not just efficiency
Indian enterprises are expanding technology budgets, but CEOs and boards now expect measurable returns in the form of agility, risk reduction, workforce productivity, monetization and innovation, and cost optimization alone cannot deliver that. The organisations pulling ahead are demonstrating three critical shifts.
First, they prioritise high-growth use cases rather than evenly distributing budgets. Not every AI or cloud program warrants equal investment, and transformative impact demands aggressive allocation toward high-value initiatives while consolidating or eliminating low-value ones, turning technology from a cost driver into a revenue engine.
Second, talent is treated as a strategic lever rather than a cost centre. India has one of the world’s most dynamic AI and cloud talent pools, yet demand still outpaces supply. Enterprises are responding by building internal talent marketplaces, investing in automation to boost productivity and partnering closely with ecosystem players including hyperscalers, GSIs and universities.
Third, FinOps is embraced as a culture rather than a process. It succeeds only when procurement, finance, DevOps, product and business units share accountability for outcomes per dollar spent. Once technology investments are tied to enterprise strategy, measured continuously and governed collaboratively, the boardroom conversation shifts from “How do we reduce tech spend?” to “How do we scale intelligently and capture market advantage?”
The big shift in 2026 and beyond
The real competitive edge in the next few years won’t come from who adopts the most technologies, but from who learns to treat technology as capital, invested with intent, measured with discipline, and redirected without hesitation. FinOps is ultimately about elevating technology from a support function to a board-level growth lever. The organisations that succeed will be the ones where CIOs, CFOs and business leaders stop asking “How much are we spending?” and start asking “What future are we funding?”
—The author, Samit Shetty, is Country Leader, Automation Platform, IBM India & South Asia. The views are personal.
