Understanding Service Catalogs for FinOps: A Comprehensive Guide (PART1)

Organizations are bombarded with an ever-expanding array of IT solutions in the dynamic digital transformation landscape, from cloud-based services and SaaS platforms to bespoke internal systems. As technology advances at an unprecedented rate and user demands escalate, maintaining a competitive edge necessitates strategically embracing these digital resources.

Navigating this complexity requires a consolidated approach—a unified portal that simplifies the multitude of options available, making every necessary service readily accessible with minimal friction.

Amidst this complexity, there's a clear need for a streamlined view—a single pane of glass that brings order to this diversity, ensuring every service is just a click away.

And if you're looking for part 2 - you can find it here.

Original article here. 

The Role of the Service Catalog

Enter the concept of the service catalog. Central to managing cloud resources, the AWS Service Catalog exemplifies how organizations can oversee their infrastructure as code (IaC) templates—be it CloudFormation or Terraform configurations—under a single, governed framework. This tool facilitates compliance with stringent regulatory standards and ensures that users can swiftly deploy essential cloud resources as per their requirements.

A service catalog meticulously compiles and organizes IT and service assets within an organization, presented clearly and structured. It details the services on offer, including operational nuances and access procedures, serving as a centralized repository. This system plays a pivotal role in enabling organizations to efficiently manage the services they provide, making them readily available to all relevant users and stakeholders.

Utilization by Engineering Teams

Engineering teams leverage service catalogs for multiple purposes:

• Visibility and Discovery: Service catalogs provide a comprehensive view of all available services, making it easier for engineers to discover and utilize existing resources instead of duplicating services.
• Standardization and Compliance: They help standardize service deployment and management practices, ensuring compliance with organizational policies and industry standards.
• Automation and Orchestration: By integrating service catalogs with CI/CD pipelines, engineering teams can automate the provisioning and management of services, leading to faster development cycles and reduced human error.

Imagine an enterprise team deploying microservices across clouds; With a service catalog, they quickly find compliant orchestration services, cutting deployment times and ensuring security. It's their strategy for agility and safety in the digital race.

Service Catalog as part of the FinOps Journey

One of the critical objectives for a FinOps team is achieving TCO (total cost of ownership) of their cloud bills. While traditionally, service catalogs are built for the engineering departments; they play a crucial role by being the source of truth for the company ownership and basically the blueprint for a showback model by enabling direct mapping of services to teams in the organization hierarchy. This method ensures accurate cost allocation, leading to transparent financial management. Specifically, a well-organized service catalog allows, for example, an enterprise to track cloud service expenses by project or department, thus improving budget optimization and operational efficiency.

In other words, today, every FinOps team has a service catalog; the question is, how are they maintaining it? Is it automatic? Is it based on the engineering tools? FinOps must understand this critical juncture in their FinOps journey to achieve scale and accuracy.

Tools for Creating Service Catalogs

Several tools and platforms facilitate the creation and management of service catalogs. Some popular ones include:

Cloud Service Providers: AWS Service Catalog, Azure Managed Applications, and Google Cloud Catalog are examples of cloud-native tools that provide functionalities to create and manage service catalogs specific to their ecosystems

Self-Service and BYO (Bring Your Own) Capabilities: Self-service portals empower users to request and manage services independently, following predefined workflows and policies. This approach enhances agility and reduces the administrative burden on IT teams.

Backstage by Spotify (open-source). It offers a developer portal that allows teams to manage software components, including services, libraries, and documentation. Backstage stands out for its extensibility, enabling organizations to customize their catalogs and integrate various tools and services. This makes it an excellent option for companies adopting a self-service model or enhancing their service catalog with BYO capabilities.

ServiceNow: Offers a comprehensive IT Service Management (ITSM) solution with a robust service catalog feature, enabling automation and self-service capabilities.

Terraform: Used for infrastructure as code, Terraform can help define services in a catalog as code, promoting automation and consistency.

Conclusion of part 1

Navigating the complexities of today’s IT landscape demands more than just a well-maintained service catalog; it requires a detailed approach to manage cloud environments effectively at scale.

While a service catalog provides a necessary foundation for organization and accessibility, the integration of FinOps principles brings the needed depth of visibility and control for managing cloud resources efficiently.

Click here to read Part 2 of our series, where we are diving deeper into how FinOps complements the service catalog, enhancing your enterprise's cloud management strategy

in the meantime, feel free to learn more about Finout's enterprise-grade FinOps solution here.