The roles and responsibilities for spend management may introduce organizational challenges that differs from typical on-premises server and/or IT services procurement. Finance and IT teams are encouraged to review and potentially adapt their existing approval frameworks to support cloud resource commitments.

Here are some questions to consider for that framework:

  • Who are the personas involved in spend management? For example: Finance manager, Cloud Admin, IT director.

  • Which individuals or roles decide on when a subscription is needed? Is capacity trending analysis required?

  • Who is authorized to commit funds? Does the same individual have permission to provision additional capacity and/or services?

  • Does the procurement workflow require any processes for authorization? (Jira, ServiceNow, Remedy, Email/Spreadsheets)?

  • Are there tools being used to provide spend management reporting and tracking?

Note:

VMware Cloud Health or other third party can be used to analyze and manage cloud cost, usage, auditing, and governance.