Worldwide spend on cloud infrastructure hit a staggering $169 billion in 2022 with Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) combined, accounting for 62 percent of the cloud market share. In its first quarter of this year revenue from AWS totaled $21.35 billion, representing almost 17% of Amazon’s overall revenue. What lessons can we learn from within AWS about effective cloud financial management? How can FP&A teams better understand this complex line item? We are joined by Jeff Duresky, Senior FinOps Commercial Architect, Amazon AWS. He is a finance leader who supports the cloud leader’s largest and most strategic customers – and has also held strategic FP&A roles at companies including Capital One. “As a finance professional the more you understand cloud, the better the insights you’ll be able to drive” – Jeff Duresky In this episode Jeff’s worst budget experience (aka professional service accrual releases). The link between cloud financial management and FP&A trading fixed expenses in cloud  Smart decisions related to cloud expenditures and management  Common cost language – how to get it right  Secrets to cloud forecasting  Promoting the best finance and engineering team conversations around the cloud  Finding reductions in costs for cloud users Core metrics to assess and unit costs (cost per gigabyte, cost per instance) First steps to begin forecasting cloud costs My biggest finance strategic moment  The last finance thing I googled The importance of taking notes in a career in FP&A Notes How to establish and drive a forecasting culture  How to talk about cloud with a non-cloud audience (business partnering) The Key to AWS Optimization Follow and connect with Jeff Duresky on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffduresky/ FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails, Datarails is the AI-powered financial planning and analysis platform.  Keep your own Excel financial models and spreadsheets and benefit from AI for data consolidation, reporting and planning.