January 20, 2026
Worldwide public cloud spending is expected to hit $723.4bn this year, according to Gartner, up from $595.7bn in 2024.
As cloud usage grows, keeping spend under control has become one of the hardest jobs in IT. Many organisations turn to FinOps to bring visibility and discipline to cloud costs. It helps teams understand where money is being spent, and why.
But FinOps was never meant to work in isolation.
Most enterprises now run hybrid environments, where public cloud and on-premise infrastructure coexist. In these models, cloud costs are shaped by on-prem decisions.
From licensing and hardware lifecycles, to where workloads run.
This is where IT Asset Management becomes critical. Historically focused on datacentres and on-premise estates, ITAM now provides the infrastructure visibility FinOps needs to manage hybrid costs effectively.
As hybrid becomes the norm, FinOps is increasingly drawing on on-premise and data centre ITAM, not as a parallel function, but as a necessary input to cost control.
FinOps began in the cloud. Then hit its limits.
The FinOps framework came from a few recurring problems. The lack of centralised IT control over IT infrastructure meant there was no visibility over which department or team should be paying for what assets, which made costs uncontrolled and unpredictable.
Costs would jump unexpectedly, without warning, with workloads scaling faster than finance teams could track.
And leadership would spend too much time trying to reconcile spend with cost drivers.
This led to nearly half of businesses saying they struggle to stay in control of cloud costs.
FinOps has brought financial maturity and accountability to a wild and expensive business problem and helped create stakeholder accountability for resources. But there are still problems when it comes to on-premise visibility and observability.
And this comes down to accurate data.
In FinOps, ITAM is often called the “allied persona” because it’s who provides the data needed for FinOps to be effective.
The problem many businesses have is that the ITAM persona doesn’t have the accurate data to give to FinOps because of inadequate ITAM tooling.
This leaves a flaw in FinOps.
Without the accurate data, FinOps has no oversight of where workloads go, and who in the business should be charged for them.
And without this, there’s no way to create true cost accountability.
Where ITAM fills the visibility gaps
Where FinOps struggles is where ITAM steps in by creating visibility across the physical, virtual and licensed infrastructure that underpins hybrid environments.
ITAM helps teams understand:
- What infrastructure and software assets exist on-premise and Cloud
- How those assets are allocated to platforms, environments, and services
- What licences are deployed, entitled and at risk
- The lifecycle state, support status and renewal timelines of assets
IT asset management brings clarity to the parts of your digital estate FinOps doesn’t reach.
Where FinOps brings you financial understanding. ITAM brings asset understanding.
Separately, you get part of the picture. Together, they create the full picture that most teams lack.
This is something we’re already seeing.
FinOps is pulling SAM into scope as cloud-first licensing models collide with on-premise realities, from SaaS and Shadow IT outside procurement, to BYOL decisions and the true cost of running data centres vs cloud infrastructure.
Cloud waste and hardware waste behave the same way
While they look different, cloud and hardware waste follow the same pattern.
Unused cloud instances and unused laptops waste spend.
Over-provisioned services and over-spec’d machines increase budgets unnecessarily.
And untracked cloud services, and untracked hardware both create security and governance risks.
Waste is a significant problem, with around 30% of cloud spend thought to be wasted, according to one study.
ITAM has been solving this on the hardware side for years, giving teams visibility of all their assets so they can better manage them.
FinOps, more recently, is now tackling this problem for Cloud.
The job now is getting them to work together to reduce waste in both places.
Why ITAM and FinOps are being pulled together
FinOps and ITAM aim for the same result, even if they approach it differently.
FinOps gets clarity and accountability on cloud costs. ITAM gets clarity on devices and software.
Both want and need accurate information, clear ownership and better planning.
Once these teams share data, the guesswork disappears. Forecasts become more accurate. Ownership becomes clearer. Waste becomes harder to ignore.
We’re now seeing FinOps expand to include ITAM and SAM so teams can see the full digital estate, rather than seeing separate costs.
The cost of fragmented tools
One problem most organisations find with cost management is they don’t just use one system.
They have a FinOps platform, an ITAM tool, a CMDB, and some even have spreadsheets to fill in the gaps.
This fragmented approach is inefficient and expensive. It’s thought UK businesses alone waste £32bn a year from tool complexity – much of it caused by running multiple, disconnected systems.
When cost data sits in one place and asset data in another, simple questions take longer to answer.
Reports contradict each other. Forecasts drift. Teams repeat the same work because systems aren’t speaking the same language.
We’re now seeing more of FinOps and ITAM using the same information, whether through a shared workflow or a common platform.
You can’t control hybrid models without knowing the assets behind them
ITAM and FinOps aren’t competing approaches. Where FinOps tracks spend. ITAM tracks the assets and licences that create the spend with hybrid environments.
Only using FinOps, you’ll be able to see your cloud usage, but not the hardware behind it.
Only using ITAM, you can see the devices and licences, but you can’t understand the business need, accountability for costs or ownership of tools that’s driving workload.
Bring your ITAM and FinOps into the modern era
The first step is to look at how your FinOps and ITAM works today.
Check if they share ownership, reporting and data.
If they don’t, begin joining the workflows so both sides make decisions from the same information.
To start seeing an ROI of ITAM, look at our ITAM visibility page for more information.
