How to take your first step toward FinOps automation with Flexera One Cloud Commitment Management

[00:06] Welcome and introduction

[00:39] Li-Or Amir:

Welcome, everyone, to today’s webinar: Take Your First Step into FinOps Automation.

This is not just a product launch or a name-change webinar. This session is about how Flexera sees commitment management done right within the broader context of FinOps automation and cloud cost optimization.

So why automate FinOps in the first place? Cloud spend is becoming harder to control every year. New technologies, new architectures, and new services all create more moving parts — and with them, more actionable insights from your cloud financial management tools.

But when you get dozens of cost optimization recommendations every day and still have to carry them out manually, those insights are not really actionable.

Flexera recognized this challenge, and earlier this year it acquired Spot by NetApp. Spot has been associated with FinOps automation for almost a decade.

Now, as part of Flexera One, cloud cost visibility and automated cloud optimization are brought together in one platform.

That means today we can walk you through what we see as phase one of FinOps automation: automating cloud commitment management. Not as a theory, but as a practical capability available to Flexera One users.

[02:05] Webinar agenda and speaker introductions

[02:05] Li-Or Amir:

In this session, we will:

• Examine the challenges organizations face when managing cloud commitments
• Discuss how commitments will evolve as we move into 2026
• Explain how Flexera Cloud Commitment Management works and how it differs from other tools
• Outline what customers can expect during onboarding, whether they are new to Flexera, existing Spot users, or current Flexera customers

I’m joined by Theron DeKok, a cloud native and FinOps specialist based in the US, and Donal Bourke, one of Flexera’s cloud cost and commitment management analysts based in Ireland.

[03:10] AI, cloud spend and Commitment Management

[03:20] Donal Bourke:

AI is fundamentally changing the shape of cloud spend. Organizations are deciding whether to run AI workloads in public or private environments, and when AI runs in the public cloud, commitment management can significantly reduce cost.

For example:

• In Azure, services like Azure OpenAI use Provisioned Throughput Units (PTUs)
• In AWS, AI workloads may leverage Savings Plans with services like SageMaker
• In Google Cloud, AI services such as Cloud Run also offer commitment opportunities

Using the right commitments allows organizations to control AI costs while freeing up budget for innovation.

[04:21] Li-Or Amir:

This highlights a key point: commitment management is not just about saving on traditional infrastructure. It also plays a critical role in making AI adoption financially sustainable.

[04:50] Why cloud cost recommendations alone are not enough

[04:50] Donal Bourke:

Many organizations already have cloud financial management tools that surface savings recommendations. The problem is execution. When recommendations are not acted on, savings remain theoretical.

Manual commitment management introduces risk. For example, committing to just $10 per hour represents approximately $260,000 in financial lockin. Without automation and confidence, teams often hesitate to act.

[05:59] Li-Or Amir:

This is also why 100% commitment coverage is not always the right goal. Coverage does not automatically translate to utilization or value.

[06:23] Donal Bourke:

Optimization requires balancing risk and return, which is difficult to achieve without specialized expertise and automation.

[06:42] The challenge of multicloud commitment management

[06:42] Li-Or Amir:

Another challenge is multicloud. Most organizations now operate in a multicloud environment, but true multicloud commitment portfolios are still uncommon. Is that mostly because of time and complexity?

[07:06] Donal Bourke:

Typically, AWS has much higher commitment coverage than other providers, partly because of the structure of its savings instruments.

With AWS, you can often benefit from both commitment savings and enterprise discounts.

In Azure and Google Cloud, it is sometimes an either-or situation. For example, if you already have an enterprise agreement discount, buying a reservation may replace that discount rather than stack on top of it.

A good example is Azure Managed Disks, where the enterprise agreement discount can sometimes be more valuable than the reservation itself.
The challenge is not just buying commitments — it’s knowing which commitments to pursue and where they actually deliver value.

That complexity makes it difficult for individual FinOps teams to manage effectively across all three clouds.

[08:17] Commitment management for Kubernetes and cloud native workloads

[08:17] Li-Or Amir:

Theron, you work with a lot of cloud-native customers running workloads on Kubernetes, whether in Amazon EKS or elsewhere. Are commitments still relevant when usage is so dynamic?

[08:45] Theron DeKok:

Even in highly dynamic, containerized environments running on Kubernetes, a portion of workloads is predictable enough to justify commitments.
Organizations benefit from using a mix of:

• Standard Reserved Instances
• Convertible Reserved Instances
• Savings Plans

What matters most is aligning commitments with actual workload behavior over time.

[09:18] Li-Or Amir:

When commitments are purchased by a FinOps team, how do you ensure engineers can actually operationalize that value in auto-scaling environments?

[09:43] Theron DeKok:

Engineering teams do not want more dashboards. That’s why Cloud Commitment Management works alongside Flexera’s workload optimization and container optimization capabilities. Commitments, Spot usage, and autoscaling environments are managed together, and everything can integrate with Terraform workflows.

[10:45] Matching commitments to real cloud usage

[10:45] Theron DeKok:

Manual commitment strategies often fail because usage fluctuates while commitments remain static. This leads to overcommitment, undercommitment, or unnecessary on-demand spend.

With Flexera Cloud Commitment Management, commitments are adjusted continuously using a tiered strategy that aligns more closely with real usage patterns.

[11:32] Li-Or Amir:

This approach relies on flexibility, including micropurchasing and convertible commitments, to adapt to bursts and shifts in demand.

[12:19] How Flexera Cloud Commitment Management works

[12:19] Theron DeKok:

Flexera uses AI and machine learning to define an optimal commitment strategy for each organization.

A key metric we use is the Effective Savings Rate (ESR), which measures savings across:

• Standard compute services
• Managed services
• Blended environments that include Spot Instances

Commitment coverage and ESR are tracked across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, giving organizations a consistent view across their multicloud estate.

[13:44] Li-Or Amir:

Another important point is that cloud commitments are no longer just about compute.

Historically, people focused on compute because that’s where commitments often produced the highest discount rates.

But today, organizations spend heavily on non-compute services too—including AI services, databases, and analytics platforms.

When you have one solution that helps optimize savings across all of those services, cloud savings become much more comprehensive.
That’s what we’re building with Flexera.

[14:19] What makes Flexera different in Cloud Commitment Management?

[14:30] Theron DeKok:

Flexera Cloud Commitment Management stands out in four ways:

• Broad coverage—supporting more than 60 commitment types across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
• Lower risk—with average lockin periods of around five to six months
• Hybrid approach—combining AI automation with human FinOps cost specialists
• Platform integration—commitment management is part of Flexera One, alongside SaaS management, cloud license management, sustainability, and workload optimization

[16:32] Li-Or Amir:

Human expertise matters because future business changes cannot be inferred from historical usage alone. Analysts can translate roadmap-level context into smarter commitment strategies.

[17:11] Product Demo: Flexera Cloud Commitment Manager dashboard

Demo walkthrough: Effective savings rate, coverage and commitment expiry

[17:19] Theron DeKok:

The Cloud Commitment Manager dashboard shows:

• Effective Savings Rate by service type
• Coverage and utilization trends over time
• Commitment expiry to manage risk
• Automated and analyst-assisted actions

This view helps organizations understand savings performance and risk exposure at a glance.

[20:24] A day in the life of Flexera Cloud Commitment Management

[20:31] Donal Bourke:

Flexera Cloud Commitment Management operates in four stages:

• Analyze – evaluate current usage and opportunities
• Customize – adapt strategy based on business context
• Automate – continuously exchange or convert commitments
• Optimize – ongoing review with a Flexera cost specialist

This combination of automation and expertise is a core differentiator.

[25:22] Optimizing savings while managing risk

[25:22] Donal Bourke:

Effective optimization focuses on achieving maximum savings without introducing unacceptable risk.

Strategies include:

• Micropurchasing
• Automated waste conversion
• Balancing short and long-term commitments
• Coordinating commitments with Spot Instances
• Aligning commitments with cyclical workload patterns

When commitments and Spot are used together correctly, organizations can achieve strong ESR results while maintaining performance.

[30:02] Closing remarks

[30:02] Li-Or Amir:

Thank you for joining us. This webinar is available on demand and we encourage you to reach out for a personalized walkthrough of Flexera Cloud Commitment Management.

We look forward to continuing the conversation and exploring deeper FinOps automation use cases in future sessions.