TBM vs. FinOps, and Who Owns Cloud
The Question: Aren't TBM and FinOps the same thing?
What's Going On: I've been doing TBM at my company for a long time, and recently a new FinOps team was formed specifically to analyze cloud spend. We already have cloud data in our TBM model at a high level and can assign it to apps, business units, and the Bill of IT. I'm not sure why we need a separate FinOps group when we already have a TBM group.
What I'm Afraid Of: As we keep moving more to the cloud, I'm worried our group will become irrelevant.
No. TBM and FinOps aren't the same thing, and there's room for both in your organization. It's still a fair question, and a fair fear, because the FinOps Foundation recently widened what it counts as FinOps, so the overlap is bigger than it used to be.
TBM is about managing all of technology spend across budgeting, cost, and forecasting. TBM offices are usually multidisciplinary, mixing tech strategy and finance skills. The general ledger is the source of truth: TBM models cost and consumption from it and produces forecasts leaders use to make decisions. The cadence is usually monthly to quarterly.
As you noted, FinOps has historically focused on cloud financial management, meaning the infrastructure and platform services bought from public cloud providers. The expanded scope now covers public cloud, SaaS, licensing, data center spend, and AI. The key difference is day-to-day optimization, run through the Inform → Optimize → Operate phases the FinOps Foundation defines. FinOps practitioners often meet with the same leaders TBM teams do, with a focus on cloud spend and forecasts. They also partner closely with engineering teams to optimize the footprint that already exists.
Technology is vast and different from most other functions in an enterprise. TBM is a specialized version of work Finance already does, like cost accounting and forecasting. What it adds is knowledge of how technology actually operates, and that is what helps leaders manage their technology assets well. FinOps works the same way. Optimizing a growing, distributed, specialized asset like cloud takes its own skill set, both to bring TBM-style insight to business leaders and to help engineers keep making financially sound decisions as the landscape keeps shifting.
So, to your fear: I'd argue TBM becomes more necessary as cloud grows, not less. FinOps goes deep on the cloud tower, but someone still has to combine it with labor, licensing, data center, apps, and AI into a TCO leaders can act on. That's your group's job, and the more cloud you run, the more depends on getting that picture right. Set up time with the FinOps practitioners at your company; you'll each learn something from the other. Both teams are trying to do what's best for the company. Each just has its own way of getting there.
Hope that helps!
