$44.5 Billion in Cloud Waste: Why Detection Speed Is Everything
Ever wondered why cloud costs keep surprising your finance team? This week's CloudCostChefs breaks down the Harness "FinOps in Focus" report — and the numbers are eye-opening.
The Detection Problem
31
days to identify cloud waste
25
more days to rightsize resources
That's nearly 2 months of burning budget before action.
Why It's Happening
The report reveals a stark disconnect between what FinOps teams recommend and what developers actually implement:
of developers don't use spot orchestration
don't rightsize instances
don't use reserved instances or savings plans
don't track and shut down idle resources
The FinOps-Developer Disconnect
The report attributes $44.5B in projected 2025 waste primarily to the gap between FinOps teams and developers.
FinOps Teams
Know the costs
Developers
Control the resources
When they don't talk, waste accumulates.
Chef's Recipe for Faster Detection
Automate anomaly alerts
Manual review = 31 days lost. Set up automated detection systems.
Embed cost visibility in developer workflows
Not just dashboards — integrate costs into CI/CD, IDEs, and PRs.
Set weekly "waste hunts"
Cross-functional teams reviewing and eliminating waste together.
Track time-to-detection as a FinOps KPI
What gets measured gets improved. Make detection speed a metric.
Pro Tip
If your waste detection cycle is over 7 days, you're competing with enterprises that respond in hours. Automation isn't optional anymore.
The Bottom Line
The $44.5B question isn't IF you have waste.
It's how fast you can find it.
Dive into the full recipe at cloudcostchefs.com
Learn practical strategies to detect and eliminate cloud waste faster.
Source: Harness "FinOps in Focus" Report, 2025
CloudCostChefs: Making cloud cost optimization practical, actionable, and accessible.