FinOps That Cuts Cloud Spend Fast

A waste map, the levers you can actually pull, and reporting your finance owner can read. Start with Discovery $99, then Consulting $499, Starter $2,500, or Growth $8,000/mo. We will not invent a savings percentage before we have seen the bill.

See the waste before you fund a program.

Cloud spend diagnostic — $99 Contact

Discovery $99 Consulting $499 Starter $2,500 Growth $8,000/mo Response within 24h

Waste map

Discovery names the waste on your invoice — not a generic checklist. These are the patterns we look for first:

Idle compute

Always-on instances, oversized VMs, and forgotten autoscaling groups that never scale in. We map hours and owners, not a made-up savings rate.

Orphans

Unattached volumes, leftover IPs, unused load balancers, and snapshots nobody can name. Orphans are the cheapest cuts because nobody is using them.

Unowned environments

Dev, staging, and “temporary” accounts with no named operator. If nobody owns the spend, it does not get turned off.

Tagging gaps

Untagged resources cannot be allocated to a team or product. Tagging is the precondition for a report finance will trust.

GenAI spend

Model calls, retries, and embeddings without a spend envelope. Token lines belong on the same board as compute — deepened below, and in GenAI cost optimization. See autonomous agents when agents are in the design.

RI and commitment gaps

On-demand where a commitment would fit — or commitments that no longer match the workload. We will not recommend a term until the usage is stable enough to justify it.

Optimization levers

Turn off what has no owner — idle and orphaned resources first. Fast, reversible, and visible on the next invoice.
Rightsize what is running — CPU, memory, and storage against actual use. We write the change, not a dashboard screenshot.
Schedule non-prod — nights and weekends off unless someone is on the hook to keep them up.
Commit only after the map is honest — reserved instances and savings plans when the baseline is stable.
Put GenAI on a budget — model, region, and retry limits with a named owner. Same board as compute — not a special case that stays unowned.

GenAI spend — FinOps for model and API lines

Token and API bills spike for the same reason cloud bills do: no owner, no tag, and no stop rule. This landing owns that work. There is no separate /genai-cost-optimization/ service URL — the longer write-up is GenAI cost optimization.

Why the line spikes

Shared or untagged keys, chatty retry loops, a large model on a small job, unscoped retrieval, and shadow plugins. The first deliverable is a spend register — keys, workflows, who can pause — not a savings percentage.

Usage vs managed layer

Usage is the vendor invoice (tokens, embeddings, tool traffic). The managed layer is design, policy, monitoring, and the people who stop a runaway job. Mixing them is how teams buy a platform to fix a key that should have been rotated.

Controls that work

Per-workflow keys and tags, budgets and anomaly alerts, model routing, context and tool budgets, and human gates on irreversible actions. A cheaper model swap with no tags is not FinOps.

Same review as the rest of the bill

Put model and API lines on the waste register next to idle compute and orphan storage. Do not buy reserved capacity or a new AI platform to cover a workflow you have not tagged yet. If the workload is an agent, pair this with autonomous AI agents.

Reporting

One page finance can read

What changed, what is still open, and who owns the next cut. No invented savings percentage.

Owners on every line

Untagged or unowned spend stays on the open list until someone is named. Tagging is a lever, not a slide.

Cadence on Growth

Starter delivers the first report for the mapped waste. Growth is the monthly loop and change control — prices on /plans/.

Path from Discovery to Growth

Step	Price	What you get
Discovery	$99	Cloud spend diagnostic: waste map sketch, owners, 30-min readout
Consulting	$499	Prioritized levers, reporting shape, build / wait / do-not-cut
Starter	$2,500	First FinOps implementation for the mapped waste
Growth	$8,000/mo	Managed FinOps cadence, change control, written SLA

FAQ

How fast will we see a lower bill?

Idle and orphan cuts can show on the next invoice cycle. Commitments and rightsizing take a measurement window. We will not quote a savings percentage in Discovery — the waste map comes first. Longer write-up: FinOps consulting services.

Do you need access to our cloud console?

For a useful waste map, yes — read-only billing and inventory is enough to start. Discovery can still map owners and questions from invoices if console access is not ready.

Is this the same as the cloud FinOps service page?

This landing owns the commercial “FinOps consulting” path. Catalog pages such as cloud FinOps cost optimization stay in the services hub. Prices live on /plans/ and /pricing/.

What if GenAI is the line that spiked?

We treat model spend as a FinOps line: owner, envelope, retries. Measurement comes before a commitment or a platform purchase. Longer write-up: GenAI cost optimization. If the workload is an agent, pair this page with autonomous AI agents and AI consulting.

Do you guarantee savings on model spend?

No. We do not invent a savings percentage. Discovery $99 is a cloud spend diagnostic: visibility, owners, and which controls are missing. Any later number is your baseline versus closed items.

How do I start if Stripe checkout is not live?

Primary path is /discovery/. If that form is blocked, use /contact/ or kleber@ziontechgroup.com. We respond within 24 hours.

Map the waste before you buy another cost tool.

Cloud spend diagnostic — $99 Or write Zion