CLOUDY MUSINGS

I posted my FinOps for AI badge last week and almost immediately started getting messages. The interesting thing was most of them weren't actually about AI. A few people wanted to know whether the certification was worth pursuing, but most of the questions were really about the broader FinOps certification journey. Where does FinOps for AI fit? Should somebody take Engineer first? Is Practitioner still the right starting point? What's the deal with FOCUS? Is Professional wort

Cloud conversations still tend to start in the same place. We talk about scalability, resilience, performance, and maybe security if we are feeling disciplined. Cost usually shows up later (way later), almost like a postscript to the architecture. It is something we validate after the system is live, after usage patterns are real, and after the bill gives us a reason to care. The problem with that sequence is that by the time cost shows up, most of the meaningful decisions ha