In the rapidly changing world of cloud computing, it’s clear that generic metrics are often inadequate for truly measuring success. While cloud units—metrics designed to standardize cloud costs and resources—can offer some insight, they’re not always a reliable gauge of cloud value. The problem is that many enterprises, even when they have cloud units in place, fail to create meaningful metrics that align directly with the business value they’re trying to achieve. In fact, many companies don’t use metrics at all, though they may not openly admit it.
Cloud metrics need to be specifically aligned with the value they’re meant to measure. Without this alignment, businesses can easily fall into the trap of using arbitrary numbers that don’t reflect real-world outcomes. Those working in financial operations (FinOps) within large enterprises often encounter this issue, as they try to make sense of fluctuating cloud bills without a clear, actionable understanding of what those costs mean for the business’s bottom line. This is why it’s so important to rethink how cloud metrics are applied in enterprise environments.
Cloud units originated in the FinOps space as a way to simplify the connection between cloud costs and business outcomes. The idea was to tie cloud expenditures to standard units of business value—such as cost per user, transaction, or workload—to help business leaders better understand and manage their cloud economics. On paper, this seems like a brilliant solution, especially in a world where CFOs often struggle to understand the complexities of fluctuating cloud bills. Attaching real-world outputs to cloud costs could bring much-needed clarity. However, in practice, the concept of cloud units often fails to deliver.
The reason cloud units don’t work well in most enterprises is that they reduce complex, dynamic cloud ecosystems into overly simplistic metrics. These units fail to account for the unique priorities, goals, and strategic outcomes of individual businesses. Instead of helping companies align IT and business objectives, cloud units often become a distraction, or even worse, the wrong tool for the job. A more effective approach is to tailor cloud metrics to a business’s specific needs, ensuring they evolve alongside the company. For instance, an e-commerce platform might track the cost of completing a single order, directly linking cloud infrastructure expenses to operational outcomes. This approach allows for a more accurate and actionable understanding of cloud value.